So this prompt is definitely Team Seven in Narnia fulfilling the prophecy to overthrow the White Witch. I already touched on it a little over here but I suppose I could go in more depth about this.
Then again, that’d just be me rehashing Once Then Always but with DoS Team Seven instead of the Lost Kids from Descendants and at that point it’s just a matter of tweaking minor details to better match Team Seven, how do they get to Narnia, who (if anyone) would be the betrayer for power, what are their presents from Father Christmas (if any), who gets to be Magnificent vs Gentle vs Just vs Valiant (the answer to that is, in this order, Shikako, Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto) etc. etc.
And that’s kinda… tedious.
Alternatively, the title does invoke King Arthur vibes in the sense that in the hour of the Elemental Nations’ greatest need they will return. Which had also been briefly touched on here.
I guess I can tweak that into BBC Merlin fusion/crossover? Except that chakra and ninjutsu are basically magic and that would get pretty problematic quite easily. And how would that even–Sasuke as Arthur and Shikako as Merlin? But that doesn’t really work?
Um…
Sorry, anon. I know this took me a while to get to and I didn’t even fill it properly
(I know I said the ask box is closed for this particular event, but if you want to send in a different prompt and hopefully I can do that one justice. No cheating, everyone else, just this one anon. The event is still closed.)
Hm… not any time soon. Insuperable would be from when the three of them first start off as heroes, taking on the scourge of Konoha. And it’d be very Konoha centric if all three of them are on the Justice League.
There are heroes in other cities (and the other Amazon bijuu champions disperse there as well) but there aren’t really many crises that go international…
Within Konoha there eventually develops a more official organization of the heroes–the way Batman goes from a single person into the Bat Family into Batman Inc. in the comics–so there’s something like that, yes.
Tourmaline!Shikako doesn’t have the same background with the Kyuubi as DoS!Shikako does, so mostly she’s just very confused by that weird glow in Naruto’s gemstone. Given her powers and her specialty, she make be able to sense the Kyuubi within his gemstone, but until Sasuke makes the connection between that ominous energy and the horrific forces that caused Home World to flee, she doesn’t know what it is.
Arguably, Kakashi is the human that trains himself to protect Naruto.
That being said, given the bijuu are Earth phenomenon, and humans are also Earth phenomenon the Konoha Twelve may have abilities of their own to help them fight though they aren’t nearly as powerful as their DoS versions. Also, I think they’re friends with Naruto. It’s probably because of the size of Beach City and the fact that he isn’t in school for some reason, but Steven seems awfully isolated. Naruto–raised only by Kakashi and his millions of dogs–is definitely enrolled in school.
Naruto’s is on his belly, yes, but Shikako’s is actually on her back (though at the same height as her sternum). Mostly because that’s where she most frequently gets stabbed and Gelel, but also because I like the idea of her not being able to see her own gemstone. It made researching about herself all that much more difficult and it enforces her need for other people (whether human, gem, or half human half gem).
Sasuke’s is probably on his forehead. I considered having it be one of his eyes like with one of the Rubies, but then I considered–in the same vein as Shikako’s “weak point” being on her back where she gets stabbed the most–that how much more significant would Itachi’s dumb forehead flick thing be if that’s where Sasuke’s gemstone was.
I imagine that the Obsidians (unless I get completely jossed with SU canon) are like the Uchiha: small but fast and powerful warriors. They’re higher status than Quartzes in SU canon, mostly because they’re rarer and harder to make. Hematites (Sai) were probably Home World’s attempt to recreate Obsidians but more controllable and lower status.
As for the Obsidians’ OP eye ability… I mean its canon that Sapphires can see the future so… maybe something similar for Obsidians. But more streamlined to reflect their battle capabilities (whereas Sapphire’s role was more of an oracle/advisor).
Alternatively I wonder if, because gems are just construct of light around their gemstone, that a Sharingan equivalent might be able to poof a gem by disrupting the light around the gemstone. So if an Obsidian can see the gemstone they can disrupt a gem long enough to get close and shatter them. Which is why Obsidians are the worst to fight. Its as OP as Uchiha’s automatic genjutsu skills I think.
I had considered making Sakura a Rose Quartz, but I didn’t want to include canon gem types (although I know that the “Snowflake” Bismuth mentioned is most likely snowflake obsidian).
And I had figured that Morganite might be a close enough equivalent. Like small travel-sized versions of Rose Quartz–how Rubies are the travel-sized soldiers, Morganite is a travel-sized field medic.
Sakura, Sai, and Tenzo are all a little too orderly to be misfits. Especially without the chaotic influence that is the core Team Seven. But they are meant to be scouting team to see if the planet is still a viable Gem Colony–so not exactly a suicide mission, but not gems that aren’t replaceable either.
Danzo is definitely high up in Home World, just like in canon, but he’s not THE leader. There’s either a tetrarchy like in SU canon or Sandaime is leader and Danzo is suspiciously close like in Naruto canon.
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Tourmaline–Shikako, that is, because I more and more like the idea that Tenzo is also a Tourmaline (one that can control plant-life) and considering she was probably adopted into the Nara clan not long after she formed she’d think of herself in the human name they gave her–has a very good relationship with the clan.
She definitely has been with them for enough generations to seem synonymous with the clan, but after they were firmly a clan. So in DoS Shikamaru is mentioned to be the sixteenth head of the Nara, so I’m thinking Shikako’s been with the clan for at least ten generations, but less than fifteen.
Living clan heirloom like the deer herds works pretty well for a description. I mean. They literally named her deer girl. Which is very inclusive on their part–considering their clan head naming scheme–but also partially because when Tourmaline first emerged she found herself surrounded by the deer and was like. Well, this clearly my purpose, and for a good week or so she was acting as the deer herd’s protector until the then Nara clan head was. Ah, this weirdly colored humanoid is a deer spirit blessed upon the clan, we will show her kindness and the clan will flourish. And, well, that is what happened.
The reason why Shikamaru is close enough to consider Shikako his sister is a combination of several things: over the generation, Shikako has been more and more embedded into the clan. Deer spirit to clan member to clan elder of sorts etc. etc. She’s become more and more familiar to the clan over time. Shikaku was probably raised to consider her like a cousin that can control earth.
I also think Yoshino had a lot to do with it, too. One she married into the clan she treated Shikako very much like a human. Shikako has probably eaten more since Yoshino married into the clan than she had for the century before. No one really thought to parent Tourmaline before Yoshino–because she’s an immortal rock person, why would they–but she’s still the equivalent of a teenager so it kind of works. And from Yoshino it’s not overbearing, it’s caring.
The third part is that probably Shikako grew more and more experimental in her abilities as time went on and she probably had to retreat into her gemstone. One such instance happened when Shikamaru was pretty young, and instead of doing the traditional thing of leaving Shikako’s gemstone in the Nara clan shrine for her to regenerate, Shikamaru basically declared he was going to protect her and did much the same as when Steven first saw Pearl retreat into her gemstone. It was a formative experience for both of them.
I’m not entirely sure if it’s a direct analog to the Uchiha Massacre, but I do know Sasuke is the last Obsidian (AS FAR AS THEY KNOW, Itachi might exist I’m unsure) and that all the other Obsidians were deliberately left behind to face the wrath of the bijuu who the Home World had left the planet to escape.
Probably it was an Obsidian who “unleashed” the Kyuubi (in that, if the Kyuubi was “sleeping” and the Obsidians had stumbled upon its lair. Which might have been a volcano since… fire and obsidian) and so Home World reacted accordingly?
Oh thank you! I thought no one would ask questions about that ‘verse (even though I literally said I’d like to answer questions)! 😀
Between Minato and Kushina, Kushina is the gem (Amber to go with the Uzumaki vitality and the fact that Amber can have non-mineral inclusions *cough* jinchuuriki *cough*).
I don’t think there are gem monsters in this ‘verse, simply because the events of the Gem “Invasion” thousands of years ago didn’t go in the same direction. It wasn’t a civil war that scared off Home World, but the bijuu, and so there was no Corrupting Light and so there is no corruption/gem monsters.
I’m sure Kakashi can fight–not as well as canon since he is baseline human and not semi-magical shinobi–but probably the equivalent of peak martial artists IRL. (Minato as well)
All that being said, the plot wouldn’t be the same as canon since–no gem civil war, aside–Naruto’s story is different from Steven’s story so…
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The team dynamic wouldn’t really be the same since Kakashi has known (and raised?) Naruto versus only meeting Sasuke and Shikako recently. Additionally, since the three genin/gems didn’t grow up with each other there is a sense of newness and uncertainty that isn’t present in canon. But a lot of their dynamic is personality based and seeing as how their personalities would be the same (otherwise it wouldn’t be the same characters in a DoSxSU fusion fic, but a bunch of OCs in a Steven Universe fic).
I don’t think there will be very much one-to-one adaptations for the events of DoS, but there are some equivalents in SU that I’d want to explore with this cast instead. The crumbling remains of the Gem Colony all across Earth, for one, and while there aren’t corrupted gem monsters there might very well be some kind of enemy for the team to face.
I think only the extended Team Seven (minus Kakashi) would be gems–Shikako, Naruto (half human) Sasuke, Sai, Sakura, and Tenzo. I know Shikamaru exists for sure, because Shikako as young Tourmaline was adopted by the human Nara clan many generations ago, and she kind of acts as the clan head family’s guardian/mascot/ward. Probably the rest of the Konoha Twelve are also humans and residents of the city that they’re in–although I don’t see why it would still be Beach City and not Konoha.
The bijuu are an entirely Earth phenomenon. The way I see it, imagine if–instead of going to the planet Earth that would one day be Steven Universe’s home–the Gem colonizers landed on a different planet Earth that happens to have bijuu on it. It’s not exactly the canon Naruto/DoS planet, but it’s definitely not the canon SU planet.
On a scale of 0 to Pearl, Kakashi will angst over the death of Naruto’s parents a solid Kakashi amount. Whether you think that’s more or less than Pearl… well.
Unsure if Shikako will explode things, but she does have earth controlling powers on par with Lapis Lazuli’s control over water–and considering she stole ALL THE OCEANS, is not only massive in terms of power but especially horrifying when you realize that gems are made out of the minerals in earth and there’s a very real possibility that if Shikako focuses/is pissed off/desperate enough to do so she may be able to shatter a gem with her mind. Which is probably more horrifying in this world of sentient rocks than exploding stuff. Though she may very well explode things for the hell of it.
I see everyone is excited about the Land of Hot Springs arc 🙂
I’m putting these three together because I think separately they won’t be very long mostly because they’re AUs/remixes of fic and brainstorms I’ve already done previously. I don’t mean to brush off these prompts–I, too, am all a flutter about the world building SQ’s introduced (GODS! WTF? I’M SO HAPPY AND CONCERNED?!)–but I’m not certain enough to do a full outline of a fic in relation to this topic.
I mean, as an appeasement of sorts, here’s some… spoilers, I guess: I was actually planning on doing a Hail To The Queen installment “she who has divine right” before the Jashin bomb drop (pun not intended) in which each time the Shinigami appeared it ominously looked in the direction of Shikako. Waiting for her to ascend… sort of? And during the Gelel struggle Shinigami might have intervened a little?
But finding out that Shikako is considered a “little god” by Actual Literal Eldritch Horror Jashin kind of just blew that idea away (pun still not intended). Not in a bad way, but that installment is definitely on hold until I can develop more of a sense of how deities work and, as a result, how divine right would also work. Also there are still two more canonical instances of deities that SQ might use so…
So in a Stars Also Dream!AU where the Millennium Falcon shows up after the Jashin / Shikako nuke… you know what, this is maybe at most a week after the events of Rogue One? Shikako’s nuke might be the more important thing than the Jashin peering into the tangible world (then again, that’s probably a really creepy sensation in the Force).
Um. Regardless. Whatever vestigial echoes Obi-Wan feels, Yoshino is feeling ON BLAST (pun still not intended) to an exponential degree. And this is definitely worse than the original Gelel eruption because that one was a huge burst of energy but that was positive life energy being returned to the planet (and imbued into her daughter). The nuke was the horrific ritual being co-opted into an explosion as tweaked by the Force/Gelel which probably, especially since it results in basically an entire country being destroyed, doesn’t equal positive energy.
Yoshino was worried about her children being involved in the Gelel eruption before. This time she knows without a doubt that Shikako was there pulling on the Force/Gelel in order to do something that resulted in a country destroyed.
Also, she just gave birth, and no doubt her maternal feelings are on overdrive.
This time, when Obi-Wan comes she is not interested in pursuing this thread from the past. She is not interested in tagging along on his mission to save the princess from the Empire. She has to stay here, has to watch out for her family, has to keep herself and her own safe.
She’s not actively keeping this a secret from Shikaku, but he is, you know, a little worried about the whole nuke and war with Cloud. So it’s still a T&I only project like as in canon SAD, but instead of Yoshino (and Santa-kun) going with Obi-Wan I think maybe… do one of the droids stay behind? No… Does Ibiki have any summon beside that weird jail cell? He must, right? Like some kind of monitoring thing… That as well as a missive from Tsunade’s desk inviting the Rebel Alliance to treat with Konoha.
So a post-Jashin AU of SAD would have Yoshino hands off as far as Episode IV goes. Which is bad news for Obi-Wan–he’s going to die just like in canon–and maybe a younger, less hardened Yoshino would feel bad about that. This AU would be a lot more political, I think, than action/adventure; a lot more fraught and bleak.
Shikako growing into her godhood. Becoming a god through belief from other people. Outlasting most of the people she loves. etc. etc. but having a fondness for those humans descended from those she once knew.
At some point, when her immortality begins to grate on her (and how ironic that someone whose life involved so much dying is immortal) she probably talks to the Shinigami. At first to get it to kill her finally, but eventually as one does equals…
Yeah. Sorry I couldn’t fill these properly, but hopefully these rants are entertaining enough.
I very much so think that the bijuu are more like sentient forces of nature? Like, literal walking masses of natural energy–imagine if hurricanes and such were alive and also grumpy. They’re not (before, anyway) actively and maliciously trying to kill numerous humans, just that the humans are so small and insignificant that it’s harder NOT to kill them.
So I think with Mito it was a last act of desperation–whereas with Hashirama it was “oh, we can make the world a better place (for humans) if we cage these walking natural disasters.” Well meaning, but limited.
I do wonder, though, if he was at all aware of the sentience of the bijuu. If he thought of them as giant animals and also natural disasters then to him it’d be like putting down a rabid dog, maybe.
This loosely translates as “there is no fundamental problem with this and I have no issue with the people who enjoy it but it makes me personally deeply uncomfortable”
“It’s not a trigger so I don’t want to appropriate that terminology; but I really don’t like it and don’t want to read/see/hear it.”
“it will not give me psychological distress but HOT DAMN I will die happy if I never see it again”
Doing my part as a member of fandom and spreading this. It really is a good term to use.
For example, I’m “squicked” by adultery. I legit cannot read a fic that has it no matter how well written or how much I love the pairing (it’s why I’m always so angry when people conflate polyamory and adultery. NO THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL)! If I click on a fic that didn’t have tags for adultery and I accidentally stumble into it, I’ll just back button out of there.
I do have personal reasons for thinking adultery is “squicky” beyond the basic moral issues behind it (*sigh* family, what can you do?) but it doesn’t cause me any more emotional turmoil than being aggravated that I wasted however long I read the fic for (and internally muttering that my faves would never). Then I just ignore it and move on. It doesn’t push me into a panic attack, it doesn’t bring up horrible memories or bile, I just don’t like it.
squick = I don’t really like peanut butter so I don’t have peanut butter in my house but if other people want to slather themselves in peanut butter and dance around their front yards then cool, okaaaaaay, whatever?
trigger = I’m allergic to peanuts. If you slather yourself in peanut butter do not touch me because I will break out into hives. If you have made cookies, please tell me if there’s peanut butter in this because if I eat it and there is then I will have an allergic reaction and it will mess up my entire day/week/insert period of time here
😀 Okay, anon, so in my completely non-canonical and outsider opinion on this, I actually headcanon that Shikako’s way of describing other people’s chakra is one of the few things that carry on from her previous life/“chakra hypersensitivity.”
The way she/SQ describes chakra in terms of sensations–warm sunshine, static and ozone, glowing embers, descending twilight, bubbling brook–it’s very much like someone trying to explain color to someone colorblind. (Or, at least, what I have been trained to understand in media as someone trying to describe color. I legit have no idea if that’s just a hollywood thing or an IRL thing. The only colorblind people I know have only mild forms of deuteranopia and it’s mostly a problem in trying to figure out where on the spectrum certain colors stop and others begin.)
What is green? It’s freshly cut grass and the calming scent of tea. What is red? It’s passionate like fire, the bright burst of sweetness of strawberries in the summer. Blue is the ocean, cool and deep, etc.etc.
So I always figured that chakra sense is literally another sense that we, as readers in a world without chakra, can only experience via the sensation-descriptions that Shikako/SQ give us.
Which, I think, is also kind of why Shikako is unprecedentedly keen at being a chakra sensor. Kind of like color blindness being able to see through camouflage? Most sensors cannot tell what jutsu was used in a certain place and how long ago and in what direction it went. It is, after all, why Shikako got that special jounin rank.
With other chakra sensors I think their abilities are very in the moment. They can tell you how many people are coming and how far away they are. They can tell you how much chakra a person has left (relative to their capacity) and how much chakra they themselves can exert.
Shikako doesn’t have this. Shikako is known to have a problem with… not controlling her chakra necessarily but… moderating it. Regulating it? If that makes any sense. She has and WILL use every last dregs of her chakra and think she’s still okay to walk around afterwards. She pulls her chakra in to the point where even non-sensor Kakashi gets alarmed, and doesn’t realize how weird that may feel to other people.
It’s also why Jiraiya is VERY CONCERNED that she can sense natural energy since that’s not usually something a non-sage can sense. Shikako perceives human/animal-produced chakra and natural energy with the same “sense” whereas other chakra-sensors can only perceive human/animal chakra. Shikako is using a different sense or is interpreting it in a different way.
So I guess in a very roundabout way I’m saying that other sensors are very baffled by Shikako’s chakra. She has a very active regulation of her chakra–I headcanon that the bouts of her passing out as a child as per Sunshine Sidestories Ch 17 is that she hadn’t yet figured out the trick to subconsciously producing chakra. Or rather, while she was still new to the Naruto world, she was too aware of it and kind of…
You know how when you realize you’re breathing and then you become too conscious of breathing and then your pattern gets all weird until you forget about it and then it’s just back to something you do normally? Yeah. Like, Shikako’s body subconsciously will produce chakra but in the early years she was too aware of chakra because of her “hypersensitivity” and so she had to manually produce chakra until it became (like the enhancing her muscles with chakra, like breathing) just something she could do without thinking. (Which is kind of the “epiphany” she has in the fifth installment of Flip To The Last Page)
Yeah. So, very strange for other sensors. If I had to attach normal chakra sense to a RL sense, it’d probably be sound. Which explains why most normal chakra sensors can’t perceive natural energy because it’s just always there and if you’ve always lived with natural energy then there is no change in “sound” for you to hear so it just gets filtered out. Either that or natural energy is at a “frequency” outside of normal chakra sense the way some sounds can be heard by animals but not humans.
So for these listening chakra sensors, Shikako’s chakra is kind of like listening to someone whose volume kind of jumps all of the place for no perceivable reason. Or maybe if its music then the tempo changes for no reason. With other people volume/rhythm corresponds to how much chakra they have left and how they feel emotionally, with Shikako it’s just kind of all over the place. Sense of hearing also goes with the whole “their sense helps in the moment and even at a range, but not after a period of time” since there’s no leftover sound for them to pick up.
Whereas Shikako’s chakra sense is probably more like RL sense of touch. It’s been said before with trying to follow the “heat” of the earth walking jutsu. And it would kind of explain how she can perceive natural energy even though it’s always around and (minus, perhaps the Dead Wastes of the Gelel shrine) her body has never been in a world without natural energy. Like… people who live in one place their entire lives know what humidity is (or lack thereof, for us desert peeps) and don’t have to know what a different humidity is like to know that the air is wet or dry.
If that makes any sense…
So yeah.
Other chakra sensors look for the changes in chakra around them (like sound is vibrations in the air) and to them Shikako is pretty much that one radio station that doesn’t know how to moderate their volume between songs and doesn’t have a set music genre either.
True, true. If it were actually “hypersensitivity” then Shikako really oughtn’t be able to use chakra, or she would have a more typical chakra sense but with a wider range or more accurate ability to tell changes in chakra.
“Hyperaware” does work better, but there’s an aspect of… consciousness? There that doesn’t quite explain the intrinsic difference between Shikako’s perception of chakra and other people’s. And, well, there was the whole arc where Kakashi-sensei had to train her to use her sensor ability to the fullest…
I’m actually not sure what term I’d use, @wildtabbykat…
Chakra atypical?
Other chakra atypicals would include Lee (obvs), maybe the Aburame clan, and probably Naruto (although I’m not sure if that’s a side effect of him having the Kyuubi or he already was chakra atypical and the Kyuubi certainly didn’t help matters… how was Kushina with chakra control? It might be an Uzumaki clan thing).
JackSGreyson Says 