Alright, you all know that I'm a major advocate for this story and one of its bigger fans on DLP.

But I swear this felt like half a chapter again, something that has been happening more and more recently.

On one hand I don't mind, because I like the pace of the story and the timeskip content and all that other crap other some people dislike. But the three or so chapters on fixing Kakashi could have been two chapters (same content, just in bigger chunks) and all that really happened in this chapter was the baby being born and some setup (the coin) for awesome content-to-come.

It just feels like having blue balls instead of getting enough story in one chunk for it to feel like a real chapter. This chapter could have been tagged onto the end of the last one and then both would have felt more complete, imo.

But that's just me nitpicking -- it's fanfiction and doesn't have to conform in the way a different kind of story would.

So, bets on if Kakashi goes with her? The chapter made it seem like she was heading out solo, which would keep all the secrets properly, but I remember in a previous chapter she'd thought how convenient it would be to have a cover for why she and Kakashi might be going on a "pick up" mission. Because everyone was suspicious when they did it before (to get Sasuke's scroll) but now it's a pattern, etc.

Regardless this is all fun.

And Palindrome screw you cuz of your thread about posting your best fanfiction, and only listing ONE, and then people sometimes listing more than one, and it leaving me torn because I was tempted to list THIS ONE but then I got all pissy b/c everyone wasn't perfect about the ONLY ONE rule, and it's hard to pick just ONE, and then why couldn't it be top three damn you instead of saying one so I hate you. <3

Also I just had a surprise root canal and am a bit loopy. :awesome

 

Holy fucking shit.

If anyone spoils this before it's been posted at least 48 hours I will end you.

Edit: Feel free to use spoiler tags to discuss, of course... I'm gonna go read it again.

 

Yeah... I also went back for an immediate re-read. Talk about mood whiplash, going from the end back to the start.

Spoiler

I mean, you get to the end, and they're dragged through a horrifying mess of dead and dying people lying about on the floor, Aoba is brutally murdered, Shikako has his blood poured into her throat, she's tied to an altar and they attempt to ritually sacrifice her to a lovecraftian horror, she accepts she is going to die and manages to set this badass seal and it's interrupted and then boom but she's gone...

Then, back to the beginning! Hey Aoba-niisan, let's go 'investigate' the hot springs! Silly Aoba, with his sunglasses on in the water. Let's grab lunch and catch up!

O.O

The only thing I'm struggling with a bit...

Spoiler

...is the tear drop thing. I'm on board with her being able to use tears instead of ink for a seal. We've seen chakra be used for generating seals, and it's possible to use blood, and so on. So tears are fine as a medium.

But... in the past, Shikako has needed to prep all her seals except for Torch Blast. Torch Blast is the only one she's been able to set by touch that I can recall, and the only way to set by touch is to... own it, you know? I get that Shikako understands the Gelel seal well enough to set it. But I'd expect her to have needed to actually draw/write it out, like she's always done for everything except Torch Blast.

And on top of not having to prep it, she set it with a tear instead of actually touching where she wanted to set it. We've seen her set a seal without physical touch - a torch blast during her theater production thing - but even then her chakra was in use because of her shadow setting it for her. What she did with the tear though, that's... more advanced seal setting than she does for her best, most well known seals.

It's stretching my suspension of disbelief within the story, even though it's awesome.

What else?

Spoiler

From a writing POV... good job taking a minor canon character no one gave a shit about - Aoba - and developing him to the point that he feels like a fully formed character that I'm invested in. His death was upsetting. That's hard to do in fanfiction.

And this chapter was fantastic by the way. Didn't feel short or lacking, like a few other recent ones have (though it's not that they were lacking, just that they'd have felt better if they were combined).

Theories on what happened at the end? Best I can come up with is a reverse-summoning by the Deer for some reason, but that seems far-fetched. I guess it could be something more esoteric like being transported by the magical black hole explosion.

TBH It sounded like a portkey, lol

 

Hmmmm, that has potential, but that wasn't how I read the scene.

Spoiler

I thought the priests had Hidan-level abilities because they were in their place of power, their temple. If they had been anywhere else they wouldn't have been nearly as badass. That would correspond well to what we know about monks given Shikako's recent Fire Temple experience.

So I didn't think they were in an 'in-between' of any kind. Just that they'd been cloaking the more nefarious aspects of their temple until events in the chapter.

However if you're right and they were on another plane of some kind... then maybe the transportation trick at the end was Shikako snapping back into another area of reality.

Link?