Non-Crossovers that Should Be, or Plotbunnies Free to Good Home

[classicdrogn]

I'unno, those options don't sound horrible at all to me... For now though, I'd say stick to your existing projects if possible. I want to read what comes next!
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

was reading a Naruto redo fic just now, and had a thought - what if timetraveler Naruto wasn't as subtle as he thought (Naruto, a subtle, manipulative plotter? Yeeeaaahhh...)even if he did manage to get team 7 the Wave mission again... Kakashi is distracted thinking about how he's acting odd, and Zabuza's first strike from ambush kills him. Now you've got two thoroughly shocked and demoralized genin and a kage with genin conditioning and possibly even worse shock - it was supposed to be practically a
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

vacation until Orochimaru showed up in the second stage of the chuunin exam and everything was going so well! - and now everything is up in the air and there's still the Devil of the Mist standing there shaking Kakashi off his sword and grinning at them and the client they argued to stay with and protect just the day before... Sounds so much more interesting than another round of canon, but of course the trouble is where to go from there.

- dNN

eta- read three more since posting. Want so much.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Black Aeronaut]

... You know what? Zabuza probably wouldn't kill them. Kakashi was one thing because if he didn't kill Kakashi right away then he would be a serious problem. But three gifted, yet undertrained, genin that are in way over their heads? He'll spank 'em into submission, kill Tazuna, and then that would be that. Despite all his talk, his heart really isn't in it - too many dead friends and comrades. Oh, and when Gatou tries to renege on his payment and thinks an army of thugs will be all he needs to collect the bounty on their heads? Ha. Wave Country will soon become the domain of Momichi Zabuza, and the jumping-off point for his Revolution (because he just captured all of Gatou's wealth).

Meanwhile, the three genin are packed back off to Leaf, cowed (Sakura), humbled (Naruto), and humiliated (Sasuke). Leaf is minus one more Sharingan user, and now Sarutobi needs to find a new Jounin instructor if he's gonna salvage this cell. Preferably someone that is actually responsible on top of being a thoroughly experienced ninja (because this team has too much potential to be squandered - the Professor can see this).

Oh, and by this time the fact that Naruto is a time traveler is just icing on the cake. In fact, take it a step further. We're not telling this story from Naruto's perspective. Instead, this is being told from the perspective of, first, Kakashi, and then later their new Jounin-sensei.

And now the question is: who does Team 7 get saddled with? I've got some ideas, but nothing that hasn't been done before.

How about this? Sakura has an aunt she doesn't know about... this is because her mother cut ties with her sister as soon as she found out she was pregnant with Sakura, because she didn't want her sister to put any ideas into little Sakura's head about becoming a ninja. (Too bad, happened anyway!) Because the two women would have different surnames, the connection would not be readily apparent when you look at it on paperwork. She chose to supplement her small chakra reserves by becoming a jack-of-all-trades in the ninja world. She dabbles in just about everything. So, while only really mastering one skill set, Auntie happens to be ANBU and damn good at what she does.

If we want to make her even MORE interesting, we can make her a single mom. Child is the result of a mission that required strictly feminine abilities and, as we all know, birth control is not always 100% effective. However, she decided to keep the child and it is now five years old and just itching to get into Ninja Academy.

[anowack]

"Zabuza kills Kakashi in the first skirmish and lets Team Seven go" is a compelling and plausible enough plot starter that I would like to see it without the time travel aspect.

---

Aaron Nowack

[classicdrogn]

I think you're (both) right about that - all it would take is Zabuza recognising who he was up against before revealing himself and deciding not to screw around like a drama queen until Sharingan Kakashi, one of Leaf's strongest, has already been taken care of in a more ninjaly fashion. As for funding the revolution, he's got the massive bounty on Kakashi's head from Iwa, and a fully developed sharingan eye with over 1000 jutsu...

'cause transplanted haxingan keeping their techniques is canon, after all.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

with the time travel element eliminated, the story could actually start with $newsensei being briefed about the C-rank gone wrong, or have a prologue from Zabuza's pov where he takes care of business and decides to let the kids go. (Killing someone he's started to consider a comrade right in front of him is apt to trigger Naruto's demon-powered berserk button though, even*) Exploring how this alters the kids from canon is too important to such a plot to keep a strict one-character perspective, though.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

(*without Haku's forest scene to put it into words, so there may not be quite as much 'let' in there as Zabuza is initially thinking...)

And yes, I know posting this way is confusing, but the PSP is not designed for easy text entry and my inserted comment hit the length limit partway through. Sorry.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Sirrocco]

I have a bit of a question on why you'd want an OC. I feel like this is an interesting story in a number of ways, and that tossing Team 7 an OC-sensei makes it a lot more likely that it'll turn into some sort of a "Kakashi died, and so we're all more badass now" - which seems poor to me. Let's think about this for a bit, and see if we can't come up with a decent character from the series first - or at least a character that fits into the mainstream of one of the well-known families, rather than just cramming in levels of generic badass.

The kids are traumatized. Also, the Hokage fully realizes that there are not one, but two psychologically fragile Strategic Assets Of The Leaf on this team, and that the idea of having someone who could train Sasuke in the sharingan is pretty much torched unless he does something like call Itachi back home. For the moment, what he's looking for is someone who can put them back together again psychologically (as competent ninja first, and well-balanced people as much as can be managed after that), keep them from going rogue, and not let their training fall behind too far. He probably saw Sakura as someone of limited long-term value who's on the team because she's not all that important and therefore won't take up too much of sensei's time. He's going to have a hard time matching Kakashi's combo of Obito/Minako-driven personal loyalty, obsessive team-identification, hypercompetence, and understanding of broken, broken children, so perhaps it's time to take another strategy.

So what sort of a person does he want to hand them to?

[classicdrogn]

the first that springs to mind is Yamanaka Inoichi of course, but I think Akimichi Chouza might actually do better with his less severe looks - and his old team mate for advice and backup as needed. The main problem with finding a canon character to take them is we barely see any besides enemies, the other team senseis, chuunin and special jonin, Jiraya and Tsunade. The clan kids' parents are little more than names and faces in maybe half a dozen panels, if you're going to use one it's almost an OC anyway.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Bluemage]

Well, CLEARLY the best choice is somebody with decades of experience- not only as a ninja, but a ninja dealing with youth, psychological issues, and training.
I'm talking about Danzo, of course.
(...he'll go mad within a month.)

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[The Wanderer]

I just thought of an entire vein of possible Homestuck fanfic which is, as far as I'm aware, completely unmined.

It's a fairly common concept in Homestuck fandom that in a more "normal" Sburb session, the players who survive to see the Ultimate Reward - especially those who may have reached the God Tiers - go on to become the gods of the new universe, with domains, titles, and spheres appropriate to their natures and/or to the titles they bore in the game.

With that in mind, look at the various pantheons of the known mythology of our universe - Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, Hindu, Celtic, Chinese, Japanese, Aztec, and so forth - and consider what the hypothetical sessions they might have played might have been like.

[The Wanderer]

Many people complain about the plot element of the Horcruxes, referring disparagingly to a video-game-style "collect the plot coupons" story.

I think I see a way to keep the basic idea, but completely eliminate the Horcruxes themselves - except, in the end, for Harry.

What if the Dark Mark were, or at least were built around a seed/core/"keystone" of, a tiny fragment of Voldemort's soul? Taking it farther, what if Horcruxes had to be living things?

The process of making Voldemort susceptible to permanent death would be at once much more straightforward and much harder. (Especially if he arranged to have some Marked followers who were not classed among his agents, but simply lived quietly, serving him only by preventing his death.)

The collect-the-magical-artifacts Horcrux hunt would be entirely optional, or with the latter model, could even be a decoy set up to distract people from what really preserves Voldemort's life.

Nagini-as-Horcrux would seem like considerably less of a stupid idea, especially in the latter model - and even more especially if she were a lot less obviously something more than an ordinary snake.

Harry's connection to Voldemort, and the manifestations derived therefrom, could potentially fit logically within the overall framework - with the differences resulting, at least in part, from the fact that he has a much larger fragment of Voldemort's soul.

And to top it all off, the name "Death Eater" would make a whole lot more sense than usual.

(I came up with this idea while contemplating the practicalities, logistics, and how-would-it-work of the idea of magical wards keyed to allow passage based on the Dark Mark, but it doesn't really have very much to do with that in the end.)

[SkyeFire]

So... variations on Naruto's Shadow Clone jutsu have been done to death. But I don't think I've ever seen this one before:

Naruto (somehow) comes up with a variation on Orochimaru's reanimation jutsu -- except that it only works on spirits willing to come back across temporarily, and instead of using their original corpses, Naruto generates a clone and "downloads" them into it. Probably needs some kind of personal artifact or strong personal connection to keep it from being too easy.
Of course, the re-animated soul only gets the chakra reserves and durability that Naruto can put into a clone, but they retain all their memories and skills. Which could be a heck of a training advantage. Not to mention, well...
Asuma and Kurenai could see each other again, and Asuma could meet his son, even if briefly.
Minato and Kushina are going to end up being regular visitors -- Naruto starts regretting having his parents back once Kushina starts meddling in his love life.
Naruto ends up becoming Speaker For The Dead -- once you start to think about it, it's amazing how many blood feuds in the series could be defused if someone could just call up the right ghost to explain what really happened.
Tsunade could actually say goodbye to Dan and Nawicki. Hinata and Hanabi could see their mother. Ditto Gaara and his sibs. And Neji could get some straightening out from his dad.
How much saner might Sasori be if he could actually talk to his parents? Or if Obito could talk to Rin? Or if Kakashi could talk to Obito and Rin? Yahiko could beat some sense into Nagato? And Sasuke... oy.
Of course, if there's any memory bleedover, things get dicey. And then, if Naruto clones up someone really skilled who figures out how to tap into Kyuubi's chakra, and/or make the clone permanent.... oh, boy.

[classicdrogn]

Not quite the same thing, I grant you, but I pmve posited that the reason the Shadow CLone is considered forbidden wasn't anything to do with chakra cost - a ninja who's so idiotic as to use a skill that drains him of that without it being a fight-ending move deserves whatever he gets - but because the actual guiding intelligence of them is a minor kami - the spirit of a handy pebble or blade of grass temporarily imprssed with a copy of the user's mind at the momnet of casting - and the jutsu expires when that copy unravels, most of the energy returning to the original, but a small amount staying with the spirit as payment, essentailly a tiny a and infinitely regenerating piece of the user's souls used to barter a contract with spirits too minor to even have a thinking mind under normal circumstances. Which is fine and no one would have a probelem with that in the ninja world either, except that sometimes, if one happens to be 'close' enough to notice the call and act on it, you get something ... else. Something that gets an instant tutorial on everything the user knows when it eats the mental copy that comes with that little piece of a soul, so you know Sarutobi really was feeling desperate when he risked spilling all the villiage's secrets to one when fighting in Orochimaru's box-o-fun. Something that is all too likely to think of that little taste like Captain Hook's hand to the alligator...

Except, of course, that would have made the story far too dark, and had too much internal consistency with how summon animals could have worked, and so Kishi would never have gone for it. Still, kind of an interesting idea if Kyuubi really had been a demon king so, the first, or even first few dozen, times this happened the something else would still not dare disobey, and he could get some explanation and possibly an only semi-malicious, trolling but not actively hostile ... something else, to act as a guide in the dicey world of being a spirit medium who provides the spirits called with a body capable of physically interacting with the real world for a short time by default.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Sirrocco]

The other idea that becomes interesting, if we don't want it to go so dark, is we run the same idea without the "something else gloms on" aspect, but... well, Naruto just uses the thing so much more frequently and thoroughly than basically anyone else ever - and he's feeding in a *lot* more chakra than normal or necessary, which leads to a swarm of these little spirits basically following him around as best they can - and getting hit after hit after hit of the good stuff, until after a while, they're not quite so mindless anymore... and they take his personality as a starter template, which means that it's not really being reimposed each time nearly as effectively, and they start building into their own individuals. So now it gets funny - because he has this swarm of spirits always around him, and many of them think sort of like him, and they have reason to think well of him, and after they get strong enough, they start being able to do little things on his behalf as spirits, if they want to (which is a fine explanation for his luck and, to some degree, his super-charisma) but they also have somewhat different goals than he does - among them, ensuring that he *keeps* using shadow clones over and over again in large quantities. They also prioritize his life *way* over that of any of his allies of the moment, which he might not be too happy with. They also start having different ideas from one another, and he doesn't have any real control over which ones he calls forth when he uses the power. Perhaps there are even enemies out there (or just neutrals or even friendlies with somewhat different objectives) who have the ability to see and influence or control his little godswarm (and by extension may be able to take a degree of control over his bunshin). Perhaps there are even a few members of the godswarm who are intending to betray him at some point if they can figure out a sufficiently impressive payoff. So now, he has a bunch of largely friendly little spirit critters that (once he finds out about them) he'll almost certainly start feeling loyalty towards, who want him to use this power All The Time, but at the same time it's getting less and less reliable (while not necessarily getting less potent overall).

...oh, and when his little demonic passenger comes out too far, it starts eating them like popcorn, so there's that. It'l certainly discourage him from depending on *that* side of his available superpowers too much.

Shino will probably have some interesting insights.

Any number of them are likely to go off script to do things more or less on his behalf - fixing up his apartment, pranking Anbu, flirting with Hinata, and so on. When they pop, he gets the memories, but at that point it's too late to do anything but damage control.

[classicdrogn]

Ooh, I like that. The reason I never followed up on it was that it was too grimderpy, but your version still introduces pitfalls and variety without going full-on demonologist.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Necratoid]

I think your being a bit simplistic.  First, Naruto has 'Harem no Jutsu' and I'm getting the idea they may, should not, all not be male.  Also, Hinata is unlikely to be the main target of attempts at dating... she is that weird girl who graduated in his class.  He'll be nice and supportive enough to her in the same way as usual... but he just wouldn't start hitting on her.  If anything, Sakura would be the swarm spawn keep hitting on.  Now having Hinata, and then others, realize what is going on and trying to train herself some Naruto spawn as a way to creep into his perception as memory bleed.  That seems more likely.  Though having random people keep trying to influence Naruto through stray clone wrangling would keep coming up.  You could even have a running thing in the background where people Naruto did D-ranks for keep talking the clones into doing work for free as they tend toward agreeable and helpful, but dumb, when they first join the hoard.  This could actually be a major reason team 7 is constantly out of the village, as all this pro-bono D-ranking is screwing with the economy.
The Kyubi shouldn't be eating swarm spawn willy-nilly... the Kyubi should be eating the boring dull ones to encourage more entertaining and wide variety. A controllable hoard of tools is a useful and comic mishap laden thing.
As these increasingly complex swarm spawn evolve they should end up fusing together... if for no other reason than mobility.  This means random constructs made of sticks, pebbles, bits of trash, and later discarded dolls and action figures and the like should be following Naruto around eventually/
---There is actually a game mechanics (so far, though in story terms) crossover with Phantom Brave where Naruto ends up with a variant on Marona's Chartreuse Gale bloodline.  Granted he has a different ability in place of 'Revive' that is more Kyubi influenced.  I rally wish it wasn't currently dead.

[Sirrocco]

Oh, I wasn't at all meaning to suggest that Hinata would be the *only* one they'd be hitting on, or even the primary one - just that, say, one of the clones wanders off and decides for whatever reason that he's going to try flirting with her - and a few hours later when it pops, Naruto gets back a memory of flirting with Hinata with a surprising degree of success, and is kind of confused. I imagine you'd have at least a clone or two try their luck with almost anyone vaguely interesting and female (with, by and large, very little success). Certainly, having a decent number of the spirits decide that they're female and regularly performing the female shapeshift jutsu immediately on summoning whether he likes it or not seems entirely reasonable. I do rather like the "influence Naruto through clone wrangling" idea - though ost of those who might try to do that could already influence him just by talking with him for a while. More likely as a hostile act is going to be throwing genjutsu on the clones (who don't have nis natural defenses to such things) and sending them back with false memories. I'd buy the idea of a small group of the civilians that keep talking new clones into doing stuff for them.

I have the idea of the Fox eating them because... well, it's a spirit of hatred and destruction, and they are small and snacky. Sure, if you want to push this towards the crack, then it becomes more of a trickster, and throws influence into making the world more entertaining, but I rather like the pathos of having to decide between his living friends (who need him to channel fox in order to save them) and his little spirit friends (who will die in droves if he calls on that power).

I was actually imagining the spirits as being incorporeal, but if you want to write it as Naruto and the Pebble Golems, then go right ahead.

Oh - and the clones that go off and do their own thing are going to have lived life a lot more fully than the default "create/use cannon fodder" types - that's liable to put a bit of a strain on his own psyche - which will in turn make it easier for them to bend to their own personalities.

I'm being simplistic here because the things I mentioned were just the first things off the top of my head. You could go all sorts of places with this one.

[classicdrogn]

I had another Potter bunny pop up - at first it would look like a pretty standard mulligan, with an accident in the Time Room during the DoM incident 5th year sending him back to his first year body, but then... This is a Harry who has just had demonstrated to him why he desperately needs to be able to defend his mind, and only knows one way to learn to do that. Of course, he's about to walk up to Snape after class and say "Oh please sir, rape my mind and rake up all my nastiest memories," he deosn't really want ANYONE poking through them let alone the one bully who's given him more trouble than Dudley ever did. But again, he knows the incantation, and the wand motion is just a simple jab - it can't be that hard to cast, right? So, he tries it on a mirror in the middle of the night. This... doesn't quite work, as he finds himself in a space of cold, hard, sharp edges, feeling like his projected will is being squeezed into a space too small for it, and treated to an apparently endless series of scenes of telling more or less slovenly schoolboys how to smarten up a bit.

Then the spell ends, and he's back in front of the mirror in the boy's dorm loo, with the silver rapidly tarnishing to black and the runes around the frame smoking. Counting his blessings that he didn't actually BREAK the glass since the last thing he needs is even more bad luck through his school years, he scampers back to bed, mind circling over the need to learn Occlumency without exposing his mind, or risking hurting one of his friends that way trying to bounce it off a shield charm if they aren't quite quick enough of can't hold it.

He concludes he neds a more magical mirror... fortunately, he knows just where to find one. With typical Harry Potter recklessness when he's onto an idea, he doesn't stop to consider that intentionally bouncing mind magic off the Mirror of Erised back to himself might, just possibly, be less than the ideal plan... rather than just seeing a version of himself surrounded by his family and friends, the memories of the life he might have had stream into his head!

Super-Harry of some sort probably follows, but whatever. Having got to the end of this I now remember vaguely one or two other MoE based stories, one with him interacting with SLyhterin Harry, and the other IIRC somehow switching with a Harriet Potter, or possibly somehow the mirror-world where she was the Girl Who Lived - that one may have started on Harriet's side and been told form her POV dealing with Canon Harry, or maybe there was yet a third fic I'm getting conflated. Details escape me in any case, and this isn't all that much like either concept really.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Proginoskes]

How would Harry conclude that he needed a more magical mirror? It's pretty obvious that he invaded the Talking Mirror's construct-mind. Harry clearly needs an utterly mundane mirror for it to work. (Not that the exercise of recursive Legilimens is guaranteed to be as useful as Harry thinks, but for the setup to work, involving less extraneous magic, not more, needs to happen.)

[classicdrogn]

Well, the mirror was affected by the magic, instead of reflecting it, you see? An unmagical mirror would probably just break if the spell didn't fail entirely.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Bluemage]

Why wouldn't he try to get a hold of a time-turner, so he could perform legilimency on his own mind more directly?  It probably wouldn't be too hard to find one- I mean, the mulligan could just not physically move him when it took him back in time.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[classicdrogn]

Because the point of it is the exchange of memories between a Harry who has all that support and is emotionally healthy, and a canonish Harry whose crappy life has left him motivated to succeed but not really able to do social connections and all too ready to take the blame/responsibility/pain for any problem that breaks through his isolation to be percieved, making them both stronger. Well, assuming the Mirror is scrying another place with the viewer's wish as focus, like a pensieve scrying the past with
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

scrying the past with a magically extracted memory as focus, or the communication mirrors scrying the present with their twin and the name of the owner as focus. Screw fortune telling, Divination is awesome!

And yes, my laptop died a-bloody-gain so I'm stuck with a PSP and sharply limited text input boxes. Again.

I'm sure you can guess how thrilled I am about that.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows