Clone Weirdness

Is it just me, or is something really weird going on with the clone techniques in the Narutoverse? The basic henge and water/earth clone stuff wasn't too bad, but more advanced techniques like Shadow Clone and that possession clone thing Akatsuki uses have some really odd properties:

• The clones have the same gear as the original, which seems reasonable at first glance. But this includes things like exploding tags and smoke grenades, and the duplicates work fine despite being some kind of chakra construct.
• Worse, special items like Samehada or the Kusanagi get duplicated too, and the duplicates have all the abilities of the original.
• Worse yet, when Naruto clones himself the duplicates are still linked to the Kyuubi. Apparently even that fancy seal Minato used to seal it can be cloned.

So if it's that easy to create objects out of chakra, why didn't Hidden Mist research a jutsu that just created duplicates of their fancy swords so all their jonin could have them? The same goes for most other kinds of gear, or money (if you don't mind cheating people).

One clue seems to be that you can only copy something you already have. Itachi can make Shadow Clones with Sharingan eyes because he has them himself, but Orochimaru can't because he doesn't. This principle seems to apply to a lot of other jutsu as well, like when Kiba combines with his dog to turn into a giant two-headed wolf. So maybe ninja have no idea how to actually make anything complex directly, they just make distorted copies of things they already have.

Hmm.

So can they make partial copies? Copy some attributes of the original but not others? Copy something thats a few feet away? Or a few dozen feet, or a few hundred? How about something they know about but don't have with them? Lots of interesting questions there.

Needless to say this is actually going to matter in Indomitable, since Naruto's going to have clones looking for more angles to exploit all the way up to the end. Thoughts?

Indomitable Complaints

Responses to a few complaints I've seen about Indomitable. Obviously I don't expect anyone who was really put off by one of these items to care about my explanations, but I figured there are probably a few people out there who are just a little puzzled and/or concerned and might like more detail about where I'm going with these ideas.

Naruto is too powerful!
Actually, at the moment he's supposed to be on about the same power level as Orochimaru and the stronger Akatsuki members. Since my goal is to write a story where he beats them without massive amounts of dumb luck and cheesy free power-ups from heaven that's pretty much the weakest I could get away with making him.

But, he couldn't possible get that tough so fast!
He was with Jiraiya for 2 1/2 years. At the start he barely used clones at all, but we've seen him use hundreds at once during intensive training periods and by the end of the time skip he has dozens of them out training (or on infiltrations as students) all the time. If we figure he averaged 20 clones at a time over the whole 2 1/2 years that gives him around 50 years of training, which is more than most of the Akatsuki members. So matching them for power and skill seems pretty reasonable to me.

But, where did he get all those jutsu?
Jiraiya obviously knows a lot of stuff he never taught Naruto in the cannon universe. Part of the premise of this story is that Naruto was a better student, and Jiraiya was a more dedicated teacher, so he actually passed on a lot of that knowledge. That gave Naruto a base to build on, and beyond that he invented his own techniques - just like every other S-rank ninja in the series.

Those demonic blood transformation techniques are way too powerful.
You were expecting the Kyuubi to use wimpy techniques? But seriously, are they worse than Orochimaru's Body Transference and Impure Resurrection? Worse than Itachi's Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi? Worse than the nuclear-level attacks that several bijuu and Akatsuki members throw around? Naruto's Bloodline Transference and Soul Transference seem pretty comparable to me. You could argue that the blood clones are on a higher power level, and in terms of usefulness you might be right, but Kishimoto has already set a pretty clear precedent that clone techniques are really easy in this world.

That divine spark stuff is bogus! Naruto is no god!
'Kami' doesn't mean 'god', in the western sense. Just about anything that isn't mortal and has a superhuman level of power would qualify as a kami in Japanese mythology, including things like powerful nature spirits and dragons. Most of the S-rank ninja in the Narutoverse would easily qualify on the basis of power, and some of them are even immortal. So maybe Sirasa could see Naruto's potential for S-rank power levels, or maybe she thinks he can beat old age. Heck, maybe it means his great-great-great grand-daddy was a major kami. But that doesn't mean he's going to suddenly grow a halo and ascend to the heavens or something.

Indomitable Q & A

Answers to a few questions I've had recently about Indomitable:

• Is this going to be a harem fic? No, not in the usual sense. But I'm actually taking the idea of a quasi-feudal Japan setting seriously, and in feudal Japan (like almost all pre-colonial era cultures) it was perfectly normal for nobles to have several wives and/or mistresses. So what you can expect to see is an attempt at portraying realistic relationships in a culture where monogamy is for commoners, marriages are thought of like business deals, and egalitarianism is a weird foreign concept.
• Is there going to be a lot of smut? I like lemon stories as much as the next guy, but if I was writing a story where the main point is the sex I'd be posting it on a site that allows explicit content. There will be lemon scenes in Indomitable from time to time, but only where the details of the sex are actually important to the plot for one reason or another.
• Is Hinata going to end up with Naruto? Now that would be telling. But I will say that I'm a bit of a Naruto/Hinata fan myself, so however things work out she'll probably be involved somehow.
• Will Ino get involved with Naruto? Not in this story. I like her as a character, but I have no idea how to plausibly power her up enough to survive repeated fights with Akatsuki memebers. Not to mention the fact that Naruto's future already has as many romantic complications as I can fit into one story.
• Will [some other character] get involved with Naruto? All I'll say at this point is that Naruto's personal life is going to get pretty complicated before things sort themselves out, and at least one major player in that little drama has yet to be seen onstage.

A Super!Naruto in a Super World

So here we’ve got this Naruto who’s actually got some brains, and a Jiraiya who actually bothers teaching him, and he’s spent the whole time skip doing massive amounts of clone training. Obviously that means he’s going to stomp all over the bad guys and win with ease, right?

Um, not exactly.

One of the interesting things I've noticed in the course of writing Indomitable is that the power level of the Shippuden universe is actually way, way, waaay higher than you might think from watching a typical episode. Part of this is because the major characters are mostly ninja who prefer to operate discretely and conceal their powers as much as possible. But a lot of it's just lazy writing, like the way Naruto's power level varies wildly depending on who he's fighting. I swear that guy has to start every story arc as a genin and work his way back up all over again.

Now, there are good reasons why writers usually try to limit the power level of their characters, but in Shippuden the resulting story flow is pretty weird: fist fight, knife fight, trickery, fist fight, knife fight, explosions!, NUCLEAR DEVASTATION!, back to knife fights. Um, yeah, right. I think I'll stick with just having the characters actually use all their abilities in my stories.

But if I’m going to do that Naruto really has his work cut out for him. Consider a few of the things we’ve already seen in the Anime episodes:

• Deidera can apparently make an unlimited supply of animated explosives, and his biggest bombs seem to have a yield of several kilotons. At the same time, he’s sneaky enough to walk up to a pair of alert ANBU and pat them on the shoulder before they spot him. Clearly this guy can blow up Konoha any time he feels like it.
• In four-tail form Kyuubi!Naruto threw several attacks that, again, were obviously producing kiloton-range explosions. Orochimaru was more intrigued than concerned, despite the fact that he had to rez himself a few times. As near as I can tell the only reason he pulled out of that fight was that he doesn’t like fighting battles he isn’t guaranteed to win.
• Orochimaru can apparently resurrect himself, repeatedly, in the middle of a fight. Yeah, think about what that means if you actually take it seriously.
• Kakuzu and Hidan are the wimpy Akatsuki members. One of them can kill anyone if he tastes their blood, while the other is just an immortal super-ninja with all five elements, massive chakra and a huge repertoire of jutsu. What would they do if they weren’t being stupidly overconfident?

In the end, making Naruto a kage-level ninja at the start of the Shippuden timeline really just puts him on the same level as his opponents. His clone tricks make him nearly impossible to kill, but there are lots of ways he could lose a battle against opponents like these. Especially if they start taking him seriously.

Not that he isn’t going to kick ass and take names in the end, because that is kind of the point. But it isn’t going to be a cakewalk…

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Technology in the Narutoverse

Power lines and trains, but no guns. Computers and fancy radio headsets but no heavy industry. Rubber, chocolate and coffee but no hint of long-distance trade. What the heck is going on here?

Well, the real reason the tech in Naruto makes no sense is that Kishimoto just throws in whatever looks cool or helps the plot along, without even pretending to try to make it consistent. But my stories focus too much on realism and internal consistency for that, so I'll just have to come up with some semi-plausible explanation.

Unfortuantely the standard post-apocalyptic scenario is totally unworkable. There are dozens of episodes where we see computers, headset radios and other devices that simply can't be manufactured without a full-blown 20th-century industrial civilization, and are too delicate to still be working more than a few decades after a general collapse. At the same time guns - one of the most rugged, useful and easily maintained examples of modern technology - are completely nonexistent.

Explanations that involve a limited development of technology fall prey to the same problem - strictly regulated cottage industries could provide small-scale electricity or a few steam-powered railroads, but not any kind of modern-looking electronics. You just can't build a fab without tens of billions of dollars worth of other industry.

So after much thought, I've decided to go with an idea Perfect Lionheart came up with a while back: they summon it. Specifically, the Elemental Countries have a little bit of small-scale industry, strictly regulated by their feudal lords, but the really advanced stuff is all summoned from other worlds. This makes summoned tech rare and expensive, since summoners aren't common and their control over what they summon isn't especially precise, but it also means you could run into a single example of just about anything.

This works pretty well both for explaining Kishimoto's crazy tech and for supporting interesting plot ideas. Guns are unheard of because the summoners are mostly ninja who aren't interested in undermining their own way of life, and the things are mostly only good for letting ordinary people kill genin (let's face it, anyone who can survive being blown through a concrete wall isn't going to be fazed by bullets either). Cars and planes are too big to easily summon, and aren't worth much without a lot of local industry that doesn't exist. But there's a lot of advanced engineering knowledge available studying from summoned books and machines, so anyone with money to burn can fund impressive one-off engineering projects

No, it isn't perfect. But it'll work well enough to hang a story on.

Time Braid Progress

Yay, the plot has finally been beaten into submission. Looks like chapter six will be ready for this weekend.

Elemental Affinities in Indomitable

Since I've gotten a few questions about it I thought it might be worthwhile to take a moment to explain the interpretation of chakra natures that I'm using in this story (and probably in FWoaJ as well, if it ever comes up there).

Unfortunately this is one of those areas where the source material isn't very clear, as Kishimoto apparently isn't the kind of author who writes up his world's background in any detail before starting the story. It's pretty clear that the whole concept was invented after the end of the first series, and in the canon storyline it serves mostly as an excuse for training scenes and a reason for everyone to be impressed when someone like Kakusu throws around jutsu from several different elements. But anyone who wants to really explore potential power-ups in the Narutoverse is going to end up needed a more detailed concept of how elemental manipulation works than the vague explanation Kakashi gave Naruto.

The interpretation I'm using is that anyone can gain the ability to use any element by going through the appropriate training, but most people can only reach a useful level of ability with the element(s) they have an affinity for. With any other element your conversion of normal chakra to elemental chakra is such a slow, inefficient process that it's useless in a fight. Some ninja will train multiple elements anyway, which lets them use piddling little utility techniques for elements they don't have an affinity with. Every now and then one of these people finds a loophole that lets them gain additional affinities, or switch affinities, or one of the other related tricks we've seen people like Fuka and Kakuzu use.

In Indomitable one of the ploys Naruto tried during the time skip was having clones do the basic training on all five elements, in hopes that his massive chakra level would make the normal limitations on using foreign elements moot. After all, he can afford to burn ten times more chakra than normal on a Grand Fireball if it's going to get the job done better than a Wind Bullet. Unfortunately he discovered that he still can't convert normal chakra to elemental chakra very quickly if its a foreign element. Combined that with the increased chakra cost, and he'd end up taking half an hour to gather enough elemental chakra to throw something like a Water Dragon. So he hasn't bothered to learn any of those high-level techniques, and he tells Anko that he can't do them (meaning, 'can't use that kind of thing effectively', not 'couldn't possibly pull one off under any circumstances').

Shipuuden Movie (Dis)Continuity

Anyone else ever notice that, at least according to the anime continuity, the first Shipuuden movie can't have happened? Here's the problem:

• The first few episodes of Naruto: Shipuuden have a bunch of scenes where Naruto sees various people from Konoha for the first time since he left on his training trip with Jiraiya. Since some of the same people show up in the movie, this clearly places the movie after the beginning of the second series.
• Naruto obviously doesn't have Resenshuriken or elemental combination techniques yet, so the movie would have to be set before the Elemental Trianing arc.
• Time passage in the movie is pretty vague, but it definitely seems to cover two or three days between Naruto's rescue of Shion and the final confrontation with the big bad. Add in a couple of days travel time in each direction and that means we need at least a week for the whole thing to play out.
• However, if you watch closely you discover that the anime meticulously accounds for every single day of Naruto's time from the moment he returns to Konoha until around the time he finishes the elemental training. The way the story arcs overlap the just isn't anywhere you could stick in a week-long excursion to demon country.

Since Indomitable takes place in the Shipuuden timeline, and Shion is going to play a significant part in the story, I guess I'll just have to cram it in somewhere and modify the surrounding details to make it fit. This isn't hard to do since the overall plot isn't tied to any particular calendar dates, but I don't want to hear any complaints from continuity sticklers who think the movie fits better in a different spot.