The Next Day
"Alvarcus." Orochimaru sweeps into my lab with a grand flourish.
My laboratory is surprisingly bare. I have no need for advance state of the art equipment and as a result there's nothing of the sort here. I have no need for long and menacing operating tables. I have no need for anything impressive really. All that is in the large room is a lot of tables and cabinets. The tables line the walls while the cabinets are secured above them for storage. They're full of extra sealing ink, brushes and varying sizes of sealing paper and scrolls ranging from a small square tag to the huge scrolls like Jiraya carries around. The room is expertly lit with multiple lights to make sure no matter where I'm working I have plenty of light. Like I said, the room is hardly impressive but it has exactly what I need.
According to Orochimaru this was once where he used to create seals of his own. Then he'd take them and test them on whoever was nearby at the time. As a result of that he's relocated his own personal seal room nearer to the prisoners since he got tired of making the long walk over to them. Morbid yet practical.
"I've been hearing the strangest things about you." Orochimaru continues. "Have you been – is that a lab coat? Where did you get that?"
I look up from the seal array I'm working on. It's one of the massive scrolls, I've been working on this all night long. "Stole it."
"You're not even going to attempt to make an excuse?" Orochimaru actually sounds surprised.
"Nope. I'm working, I don't have time for games." I spin on my chair to face my Kage better. Hmm, I should rearrange the room so that I face the door while I work. That's a good idea. "Did you need me? I was kind of in the middle of something important."
"It can wait. What are you working on?" Orochimaru walks over to examine my massive seal array. "This is..."
"An attempt to link seals." I finish for him since he's lost himself analyzing my work. "I think I might have gotten it to work. Emphasis on think. A very strong emphasis on think, there's a high chance of explosions."
"Yes I can see that." Orochimaru traces part of the seal. "See this part? It's horribly inefficient. If you did something like this," Orochimaru picks up a brush and quickly draws a new piece, "then you'll run less risk of failure. That wasn't even a critical part."
Orochimaru looks up from my seal array, he does a quick once over of me then his eyes dart back to the array. He intently pours over the massive and intricate seal to understand it. After a surprisingly quick five minutes he looks back at me to stare at me with pride.
"I know what you're attempting to do now!" He gleefully claps his hands together. "You're going about this all wrong, just wrong!"
"Really? How would you do it? I know I made this complicated but it was the simplest solution I could think of."
"Interesting. Explain your reasoning to me. We can make this a learning experience." Orochimaru pulls up a chair next to mine as I begin to walk him through both my seal and my thought process.
"Okay, so first off you need to know what I'm doing. This whole thing is just one super complex trigger mechanism, in it's simplest terms it's supposed to activate another seal based on certain conditions. That's all this does, all the fun stuff is done by a whole different seal. Still with me?"
"Yes, but there is nothing 'simple' about this." Orochimaru shares a smile with me as we're intently discussing my side project. "Continue."
"Of course. It's nice to get another opinion, especially from someone better in the art than me." We both turn back to the seal. "My issue is that I can't feasibly define all of the necessary conditions for it to not activate with each individual seal I want to make. Basically there's just not enough room on my hearts to put both the fun seal that swallows people whole and the advanced triggering seal to make sure it doesn't swallow me whole. So I came up with this."
I gesture at the massive seal array.
"I made this to act as a master seal array. In a grossly oversimplification here's how it works: Once one of my hearts stop beating the seal on said heart will activate. That activation will call out to this massive seal array with a simple question: Can I activate the other seal? In this case it's the seal that swallows people. Then the master seal array is going to cycle through and check that the seal on my heart meets specific requirements that I've written down on the master seal array. Things like am I not next to the heart? Is Sasuke not next to the heart? Is anyone or anything I care about not next to the heart? Once the master seal array goes through the checklist it will answer the heart seal. If it passes, then it activates the next seal, the one that swallows people. If it fails, then my heart just dies and the seal remains inactivated."
Basically the seal on my hearts would ask the master seal 'can I go boom?' and the master seal would look at a long list of things and respond 'do it!' or 'fuck no!' It's way more complicated than that.
"There are some downsides to doing it this way though." I point to a specific part of the master seal array, one that is suspiciously blank. "The only way to synchronize the master seal array and a heart seal is to make the heart seal there. I've got to place my heart on it in this specific spot or they won't be connected and then there's no way for the seal to activate. That means I can't reapply the seal to a new heart during combat. No one is going to let me whip out this monster of a seal and draw a new seal on a heart I stole from their teammate."
"Another issue – while not really a problem it's more of a pain in the ass – is defining every single thing that I don't want to be swallowed up. Honestly that's why I'm using such a massive scroll for this, the actual master seal array won't take up a thousandth of the entire thing. What really sucks is that I have to specify so many things for it to check that I need as much room as possible."
"That's pretty much it." I turn to Orochimaru. He's been attentively listening to my every word. Not only was he analyzing the functionality of my master seal array but he was also studying me and my thought process. He's figuring out how I think. "Any questions?"
"Yes, just one." Orochimaru is in his science mode, hell we're both in our science modes. Being able to talk about seals with anyone is rare, to discuss such a massive project is even more rare. We're both truly enjoying this. "Why did you decide to make this specific solution to your problem?"
"I sat down and came up with all the stuff and people I don't want to be caught up in the seal that swallows things. It was long. Really long. Which is rather interesting itself, but that's a whole different conversation. Anyways, I needed a way to define all of that and like I said earlier there just isn't enough space on a human heart to list it all. Plus with the master seal array I don't have to add in a new person to the 'do not swallow' list on each heart. I'll just have to add it to the master seal array. It also saves me from having to redo the heart seals if I wanted to add someone to that list. It makes upkeep easier."
"Yes, I suppose that does make logical sense." Orochimaru turns his eyes to the already impressive list of people and things I don't want swallowed. "But it isn't that practical."
"Yeah, it's going to be a long list. It's doable, but it's going to take forever." I agree with him, it is ridiculous. But it's also the best I could come up with.
"I may have a better solution for you." Orochimaru says with a great amount of confidence. "There is nothing wrong with yours, it would work with just a little more tweaking. But my solution could eliminate some of the downsides of yours."
"I'm all ears." I give him my full attention.
"How large is the danger zone?" Orochimaru asks as he pulls out a blank piece of sealing paper off the stack I have on my desk. He's not even going to grab a scroll for this?
"Five meters." I observe Orochimaru quickly create a tiny explosive seal, at most it will just make a popping noise. "I figured I'd make the seal on the hearts only activate if they were six meters away from whatever I deem important. That gives a meter of leeway."
"Six meters it is." Orochimaru adds on to the small explosive seal, making his own trigger. "While what you were attempting would work and I'm honestly impressed you came up with it and even made it, it is overly complex and difficult to maintain. When you create another seal you have to add it to the master seal. Plus you'd have to write down everyone and everything that you didn't want your seal to go off around. True it could be considered efficient as a concept, but I would make it like this."
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