It’s Time to Jump

Jump 4: Chapter 1: Feudal Japan is NOT SAVE!

I sighed as I saw Jump-chan walked out from behind one of the shelves as I was playing with Angelica.

“It’s already time?” I asked, unhappily because I had some serious downtime and I could only guess what the last poll had provided me with in terms of jump material. Especially with my daughter now a guaranteed import and all. I couldn’t just walk out of that one sadly.

“Yup. Check the Jump Machine, would you? It’s a bit of a double jump, really.” She stated and I stared at her for a moment, before standing up from the improvised play area and gave Cristine the sign to give our little sparking angel some more Pikachu lessons. It was a good way of distracting the little angel.

Anyway, walking over to the machine I saw two tabs were ready there. One was titled, and I kinda dreaded the setting because of time period and location, Inuyasha. The other wasn’t much better, it was a Korean Manwha named The Gamer, in which the Main Character gained a RPG based superpower and got dragged into the magical underworld basically, being a huge nerd with little idea about balance at that.

Well, I had a lot of advantages at least to The Gamer as a setting, aside of the fact that my default stats included Luck and Intelligence at something along the lines of Yes or ∞, and my base Strength could be in the triple digits or quadruple digits, so I wasn’t that worried about the setting, Ji Han got along fine with far worse starting stats.

However, Inuyasha, A Feudal Fairy Tale, by Rumiko Takahashi, was an Anime/Manga set during the Sengoku Jidai of the 15th century. Technically a Isekai, this story revolved around Higurashi Kagome and her quest to find and reunite the shards of the Shikkon no Tama, or Jewel of Four Souls, which she accidentally shattered early on.

The initial BBEG of the setting, after the Monster of the Week routine ended, was Naraku, a powerful half-Youkai, not Demon, born when the human Onigumo, a thief who had been almost killed, fused with hundreds of Youkai into one being. He was opposed by Kagome’s group which consisted of the Hanyou, aka a Youkai-Human hybrid, who was the eponimous Inuyasha, the Hoshi, or Monk, known as Miroku. The Youkai huntress Sango and her partner, the tame Nekomata Kirara, as well as the child Kitsune, known as Shippo. A full blooded Youkai.

The document itself was… subpar, to be honest. From what I knew of jumps, Quicksilver’s jumps were all very early installments and thus had a lot of early installment sicknesses, being a lot less conventional in their approach of anything. However, the Inuyasha CYOA, the jump I was to embark on, suffered from one of the most irritating formating styles I knew.

For starters, the Origins were Drop-In, Lost Spirit, Monk, Demon Slayer, Kitsune and Hanyou. For those unaware, this was all based on six members of the main cast and one supporting character. Drop-In was the Kagome option, it shares one perk with the Lost Soul option, is based on archery, and some priest powers.

Lost Soul was based on the deceased love of Inuyasha, Kikyo, whose reincarnation is Kagome. This Origin had a number of spirit based perks and shared the same archery perk as the Drop-In option. The character was relevant and a supporting character mainly because she had been reanimated by a witch early in the series and continued with this undead state of sorts from there.

The Monk option was obviously aimed at Miroku, the perverse Hoshi. His perks mostly revolved around his type of work but he also had a flirting perk. Nope, not interested.

Demon Slayer was an obvious nod to Sango who was just that by occupation. It revolved around… not much really. It had one of the trashiest perk lines I knew of with only a skill and poison knowledge perk to speak of.

Kitsune was based on Shippo, the team’s token kid. He was a very young Kitsune and this reflected negatively on the Origin, as the whole perk line was hindered by the whole idea of Kitsune being weak with the perks being mostly illusions and tricks and the items being genuine toys and some firecrackers. Nothing else really.

Lastly we have Hanyou. While not blessed by favoritism like Drop-In, it was based on the secondary Main Character, Inuyasha and boasted some somewhat impressive perks and a weapon based on Inuyasha’s Tessaiga. A Demon Weapon, in other words. Would be worth getting to be honest.

Overall, the whole jump wasn’t that great at all, it had some new tricks but most of it’s perks were fairly weak and not worth that much CP. It also limited builds to somewhat imitating the respective characters in some capacity, but the worst had to be the pathetic import option that gave 300 CP, but expected Hanyo imports to pay full prize for the Origin. Whoever wrote this had no idea about the needs of the Jumpers, did they?

Anyway, I’m not going to go into details on the finer points of this whole shebang, the whole of the perks and items, buying them would simply be a way for me to get a bit of an edge. A quick survey of my companions confirmed that my human companion roster would be growing quite a bit this jump since more joined. I also forced Bi into coming along so that I would have the ubber psychic on my team there.

I myself bit into the somewhat sour apple of the overprized Hanyou Origin only for the Janpasaiga and Alt-Form. My companion’s builds, using my houserule based import option, were as follows:

Cristine → Chiharu

Origin: Monk/Miko

Perks: Confidence (Free); Sacred Sutras (-100); Spiritual Barrier (Free); Demonic Attributes (-600)

Items: Kimono (Free); Map Pack (-50); Shakujo (-50)

Cristine would be going as the mother of our daughters, as listed below, as a Miko. Since Hoshi and Miko served the same general roles in Feudal Japan she chose it over the Lost Soul option, which would make her kinda dead, or the Drop-In since that would be just Kagome-like.

Mind you, we were still a human Miko in a relationship with a Bi sexual, gender fluid Hanyou woman.

Michelle → Mikasa

Origin: Hanyou (Daughter)

Perks: Some Sort of Jumping Demon? (Free); Demonic Attributes (Free); Superhuman Senses (-200); Scavenger (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Fireproofing (-50); Janpasaiga (-300) (Name: Karyusaiga); Toy Chest (-100); Map Pack (-50)

Michelle took the chance this gave her to become my daughter in blood in this jump, since as a Hanyou I would be old enough to be her mother/parent. The Hanyou background, naturally, made sense for her as such since she was the daughter of a Hanyou and a human for the jump.

Angelica → Aika

Origin: Hanyou (Daughter)

Perks: Some Sort of Jumping Demon? (Free); Demonic Attributes (Free); Superhuman Senses (-200); Scavenger (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Fireproofing (-50); Janpasaiga (-300) (Name: Kiriryusaiga); Toy Chest (-100); Map Pack (-50)

Angelica’s build was naturally made by myself as she is too young to do it. I decided to make her build basically the same as Michelle’s and slotted them in as twin sisters, so Michelle could actually play the infant she was still at heart.

Piske → Pao

Origin: Demon Slayer

Perks: Strongest in the Village (Free); Glare (-100); Toxic (-200); Scavenger (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Hiraikotsu (Replaced on request with Katana of similar make) (-50); Nekomata (-150); Firebombs (-200)

Piske was once more one of the few males of our group and decided on the Taichiya or Demon Slayer, Origin. We checked with Jump-chan if he could replace the boomerang with a Katana instead since the weapon was just impractical and not at all lore friendly. He also bought the Nekomata Item/companion, Jump-chan agreed to it because that would be more along the lines of a pet or follower than a companion really.

Storm → Kazami

Origin: Demon Slayer

Perks: Strongest in the Village (Free); Glare (-100); Toxic (-200); Scavenger (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Hiraikotsu (Replaced on request with Kusarigama of similar make) (-50); Nekomata (-150); Firebombs (-200)

Storm obviously went with a somewhat wind-like sounding name in Kazami. She had the same build as Piske so I suspect they had agreed on it, though she took a Kusarigana, a Sickle and Chain weapon. It was a more tactical weapon than the Katana but also a very versatile one.

Amy → Aiko

Origin: Kitsune

Perks: Foxfire (Free); Fox Magic (-100); Toy Transformer (-200); Shapeshifting (-300); Filter (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Toy Chest (Free); Firebombs (-100)

Amy, my little fairy, took the Kitsune origin to reflect the Fae nature that she didn’t really use all that much. She wanted to be small and cute once more apparently too.

Bianca → Biwako

Origin: Kitsune

Perks: Foxfire (Free); Fox Magic (-100); Toy Transformer (-200); Shapeshifting (-300); Filter (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Toy Chest (Free); Firebombs (-100)

Bianca took the same build as Amy, making herself one of three kitsune Triplets that were part of our group, making her the sister of Amy/Aiko.

John → Junkichi

Origin: Kitsune

Perks: Foxfire (Free); Fox Magic (-100); Toy Transformer (-200); Shapeshifting (-300); Filter (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Toy Chest (Free); Firebombs (-100)

And here we have The third of the triplets, John. Me and his soon to be sisters did a small prank on him by changing his gender selection to female, just to mess with him a bit.

Bi → Ni

Origin: Kitsune

Perks: Foxfire (Free); Fox Magic (-100); Toy Transformer (-200); Shapeshifting (-300); Filter (-100)

Items: Kimono (Free); Toy Chest (Free); Firebombs (-100)

And the fourth Kitsune, this time it was Bi who had just been too lazy to care. However, since he needed to relax a bit and both Michelle and Angelica needed a playmate, on top of a guardian, I did a bit of a prank and changed his age and gender to a 5 years old girl, so she would be young enough to be drawn into the playtime, but not too young to impair his mental abilities. Mind you, he had told me he didn’t really care about things like Gender.

Flash → Fukune

Origin: Drop-In

Perks: For Medical Reasons (Free); Marksmanship (-50); No School, no Problem (-50); Moral Compass (-100); Purification (-200); Sacred Arrow (-300)

Items: Quiver (-100); Fireproofing (-100)

Flash was another of the new ones on the import side of things. He decided to go with Drop-In to be a Time Traveler and was coerced by Happy to go in as her sister, reducing our male population in this case by another. The backstory they come up with was that they had been dragged into the past by some sort of magic and had traveled with our group.

Happy-→ Yukai

Origin: Drop-In

Perks: For Medical Reasons (Free); Marksmanship (-50); No School, no Problem (-50); Moral Compass (-100); Purification (-200); Sacred Arrow (-300)

Items: Quiver (-100); Fireproofing (-100)

Speaking of Happy, same ideas as above and naturally the origin of why Flash went girly. She also set herself up in a relationship with Piske which she revealed to be an actual relationship the two of them had for a while already, I didn’t know about that, I admit.

As for my own build, well, here it comes:

Name: Naomi

Origin: Hanyou (-300) (Kuro-Inu Hanyou)

Location: 2 km from Kaede’s village

Age: 185 years

Gender: Female

Import (-200)

Perks:

Some Sort of Jumping Demon (-50): Enhanced Jumping ability.

Foxfire (-100): The ability to produce Kitsunebi, a mostly illusionary fire produced by both Kitsune and other spirits. No, it is not Kitsune exclusive you Gaijin.

Blades of Blood (-100): Allows claws to tear through steel armor and produce projectiles from blood.

Superhuman Senses (-200): Enhances all senses to a beyond animal-like level.

Items:

Janpasaiga (-300): A powerful demonic blade, imbued with unknown powers. Chosen name: Mizuryasaiga

Fireproofing (Free): A Kimono made of Hinezumi fur. Fire resistant and decent armor.

Drawbacks:

No Exit [+50 or +100]: Jump-Chan is sick of Jumpers entering a jump and just buggering off and hiding. That’s no fun. While you don’t have to participate with the plot, you can’t just hide. You must remain in the jump-zone the entire time. No finding an abandoned star system to hide from the Reapers, no flying away from Kyrat on your spaceship, no hiding in your Warehouse. If you take this as a Jump Drawback, it’s worth +100, but if it’s a Chain Drawback it’s only worth +50, as Jump-Chan figures you won’t want to hide out all the time. And Jump-Chan knows if you’re just taking this to pad your CP total. You can only take it as a Jump Drawback if you’d really want to bugger off and avoid the plot-zone entirely. If there is no plot zone (i.e. a slice of life or some place like DCU where there is Plot everywhere/everywhen) you can’t take this as a single-jump Drawback.

Setting Amnesia [+200]: You lose all knowledge about a setting and the canonical events therein as soon as you enter into a Jump. The only thing you know is what’s been given to you by your background (meaning that as a Drop-In, you wouldn’t know anything about a Jump’s setting). If you go to another Jump related to the first (X-Men Movies after Marvel, Harry Potter after Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, etc.) you retain your previous setting knowledge, but only know about changes from your background. This includes prejudices (non-mutants in Marvel dislike mutants, pureblood wizards dislike muggle-borns, etc.). If you’re using this as a Chain Drawback, it applies to every jump consistently. If you’re using it as a Single Jump Drawback, it cannot be applied to Generic Jumps or Slice of Life Jumps that lack specific canon. If you take a Jump Specific Drawback that would scramble the canon events, this is worth only half as much, since you’ve reduced the effectiveness of foreknowledge. If there is no canonical event chain, but there is a setting to be aware of (Minecraft, Harvest Moon, Alpha Centauri…) this also halves the value. If you buy this and the jump document provides a copy of the canon, you will receive said canon at the end of the jump if you purchase it. If you have any other source of information on the canon (say a copy of the Library of Congress or the Internet), it mysteriously has no record of the Canon until after you’ve left. This cannot be gamed.

Flea (+100): Mokari is a Flea Youkai who likes to drink Jumper’s blood, pretty much Myoga but unkillable, literally.

Changing Room [+50]: You can only shift between Alt-forms by visiting your warehouse. Available for Companions, imported or not, though if used by non-imported Companions they can only buy perks with it.

First, regarding that location, I decided that we would start within reach of the village but far enough that it would make sense for us not to have met the cast yet, which would also mean that our two future members didn’t change the reactions of the villagers to Kagome.

Now, why did I take those Drawbacks? Well, for starters I started off 500 CP off the normal amount I had. The entire jump was horribly balanced like that, as if they wanted to shoehorn a Jumper into taking Drop-In and a Companion to take Hanyou, but then the Hanyou would also not have anything but what was free for them. As such I took Drawbacks from the Universal Drawback Supplement that wouldn’t hurt me too much and one of the less annoying ones found on this document.

As I said, I wanted that Janpasaiga item.

As for The Gamer, the whole thing was a huge power grab, but at the same time costly as fuck. Just trying to get all the perks the Player Two Origin gets a discount for brings me way over the 1000 CP mark and it comes with the need to take one of two Drawbacks the Origin must take.

Me and my companions all took that Origin anyway.

Origin: Player Two (Free)

Location: –

Perks:

100 cp - [ReSTAT] ( [Player Two] Discounted)

Jee-Han’s stat system reflects his own personal experience with gaming, and is divided into 6 [STATS]: [Vitality/Power], [Strength], [Intelligence], [Wisdom], [Dexterity], & [Luck] and, as anyone can see, those are essentially the D&D core six (minus the dump [STAT] that shall not be named). But gaming has come a long, long way from the days of Gygax and there are dozens or hundreds of different [STAT] spreads out there. With this perk, your Gamer [STAT(s)] can be reskinned however you like. Maybe you have [Agility] & [Coordination] instead of [DEX]. Maybe you have [Willpower] instead of [Wisdom]. Maybe you use White Wolf or Tristat or something similar. The ground rules are always the same… each level you gain a number of [STAT POINT(s)] that is roughly equivalent to 5 out of 6 where every [STAT] has a baseline of 10. Most importantly, this allows you to, once a decade, respec your spent [STAT POINTS], though doing so will cost you any special abilities you’ve gained for having an especially high [STAT]. Useless without a Gamer Perk. Stats: STR, DUR, INT, WIS, DEX, LUK.

300 cp - [Gamer’s Loot]

One of the most common aspects of video games is that your enemies will drop loot after their deaths. Be it the armor they had equipped, or a monster’s horns and claws, you will always receive a minimum of one crafting ingredient, one piece of equipment, or a varying amount of cash. The rarity and power of these items obviously depends on what you kill. A goblin might get you a tooth, a rusty knife, and a few thousand won (1000 Won = 1 USD), but a fire dragon might get you some fire resistant scales, a gauntlet that increases the power of your fire magic, and enough money to buy a new house in the suburbs. Additionally, you have a pocket dimension/inventory to carry all your loot in. This pocket seems to be practically unlimited in size, but only personal items (armor, weapons, potions, books, money, food, etc.) can be stored in it. During the jump, it will ALWAYS pay off in South Korean Won, but post jump it will change to the local currency of wherever you started from. Gamer’s Loot automatically upgrades Instant Dungeon to the permanent version for free. If you also have Illusion Technician, you can combine it with Gamer’s Loot to create ID’s based off of any combat region you’ve been to (war zones, random encounter areas… any target rich environment, really). These aren’t the real places, merely recreations of them, and they function like any other Instant Dungeon.

300 cp - [Gamer’s Mind]

As an ordinary person dragged into the Abyss, the ability to keep your cool is virtually priceless. With the flip of a mental switch, you can enter a state of mind in which panic, fear, rage, and other extreme emotions cannot exist for more than a few seconds. But order now, and we’ll also throw in immunity to just about every mental effect you can think of. Hypnosis? Immune. Sleep spells? Immune. Perception filters? Immune. Earworms and other memetic hazards? Immune. In addition, you gain the videogame interface, though this will be less than 100% useful without the other Gamer perks. This also unlocks a quest system, allowing you to gain additional exp for every predesignated action - something like do your homework, go to school, or collect twenty bear asses. Whenever someone has a task for you, a question mark will appear above their head and you’ll receive a pop-up indicating that they have a task for you to perform. Whenever someone offers you a quest, be it to do the dishes or fetch tofu from the store, you’ll gain a sense of what rewards performing this task will entail, including cash, exp, items, and or relationship status changes. Experience, regardless of whether or not you’re [Player Two] , can be used to level your mental stats ([INT], [WIS], [LUK]… [Willpower]) if you buy this. The more powerful you are, the more experience it takes to gain a noticeable increase in power, but as you grow more powerful, perhaps you’ll be able to tackle harder quests. If you have Gamer’s Skill or Gamer’s Body, you can also spend experience there.

Free - [Gamer’s Titles]

The more of a specific type of enemy you kill (Ogres, Undead, Goblins, Noobs) the more damaging your attacks will be against enemies of that type. The more damage you take from enemies of a certain type, the greater your defenses will grow against that type. These bonuses are tied to a title. Kill 500 zombies, gain the novice undead slayer title. Kill 5,000, become an apprentice undead slayer. Kill 50,000, and become an intermediate undead slayer, and so and so on. Changing your title takes a few minutes of downtime, and you can only have one active at a time.

300 cp - [Gamer’s Skills]

A wizard’s most valuable asset should be his mind and the knowledge contained therein. Whenever you come into contact with a book that contains instructions on how to perform any skill you don’t currently have, you will be given the option to ‘eat it’, thereby imparting you the knowledge you would have gained from reading it front to back, and then contemplating on it for a short time. However, this will only work once per book and will not work for theory texts. In addition, your skills will level with use, and eventually evolve into better ones at level one hundred. A simple mana chain spell might become far more powerful and versatile, and eventually it may very well rename itself ‘Enkidu’.

300 cp - [Gamer’s Body]

The counterpoint to Gamer’s Mind, the Gamer’s Body is the physical equivalent. Where Gamer’s Mind prevents things like paralyzing fear and other negative mental effects, Gamer’s Body protects the body. Giving you the body of a videogame character, this allows you to resist actual physical damage in exchange for using a HP system instead. Benefits include being completely healed after a good night’s sleep, being utterly resistant to physical damage (except in terms of HP loss), and earning exp whenever you kill something. You can punch something so hard your arm breaks, but two seconds later it will be fine again and you’ll be down some HP. And with the stat points you get upon level up, you can just up your strength (or endurance or vitality or dexterity) and make your arm harder to break.

Free or 50 cp - Instant Dungeon

Thanks to Gaia’s refusal to acknowledge magic as real, the Abyss has something called “Preventative Power”, a combination of “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” and punishment for messing with the mortal world too much. The more obvious the effect, the more bad luck she enforces on you. Thankfully, she also provides a way around it, the safe spaces known variously as Protected Spaces, Illusion Barriers, and Instant Dungeons. By pushing energy into your hand, and praying to her, you can enter a sub-dimensional space where the local environment is duplicated, but without people or animals. This allows fights to seem to level entire neighborhoods but in reality only a copy of the real world was damaged. Monsters may occasional spawn, formed from the spirits of the unquiet dead, but you cannot gain anything of material value from here, as everything here is an illusion. For the extra 50 cp, you may retain the functionality of the Barriers to summon monsters (without souls) post jump.

200 cp - Experience Is Wealth

Whenever you work a job, you can arrange to be paid in actual experience rather than money… or vice versa. If you are working a job related to a skill you wish to improve, you can sacrifice your wages to get better far faster. The more your pay, the faster you improve, but it must be a fair / reasonable wage for the work you’re doing, and you can’t whammy someone to pay you more just to increase your experience gains. This won’t work for tasks that are ‘just for practice’, or that you pay yourself for.

400 cp - Continuous Study

The longer you spend focused on improving a single thing, the more rapid your progress will be. For every subjective hour you spend, your learning rate will slowly increase. The primary limit to this, aside from how fast you can turn the pages or get new study material, is burn out. Generally speaking, you can’t study the same thing for more than a week (subjective time) straight, but by the end of that week you’ll be making far more progress than you were at the beginning. Food and sleep will not reset this, but taking a break to play videogames will (unless you’re trying to get good at videogames). Time spent eating or sleeping does not count towards increasing your study rate.

200 cp - Eleminions

A good wizard never enters into a fist fight himself, but instead sends minions to do it for them. You now have some method of creating minions to go forth and do the stuff you’re too lazy to. It could could be golems, it could be hypnosis, it could be zombies. It could be a full on elemental - if this, it starts at lowest tier - or anything, honestly. Heck, if you were desperate, you could steal some clothing store mannequins and dress them in combat gear. If your minions and you share an elemental affinity, they are more powerful, more loyal, and all around more cheerful to be with you.

400 cp - Illusion Technician

While not a master-master at making illusion barriers, you are far more accomplished at them than most others. From empowering certain elements, to debuffing those who do not meet certain requirements, to creating a time dilation effect, you can make a minimum of a shoddy version of every effect. Actually making these effects worthwhile will take a little doing. Illusion Technician automatically upgrades Instant Dungeon to the permanent version for free.

Items:

200 cp - Abyss Auction Account

Sooner or later in your stay, you will encounter the Abyss Auction, the Amazon of Urban Fantasy, buyer and seller of amazing objects. With this perk, it will now follow you to future jumps, gaining appropriate inventory every jump, at only slightly marked up prices, but don't expect anything you couldn't otherwise buy in setting. In later jumps, this is accessible only by you and your companions, via any computer, Internet optional. The auction can get things from past jumps, but only from this jump onward, and the prices quickly go through the roof the farther back in your chain you try to buy from. Five jumps back would bankrupt nations.

Free cp - [Gamer’s Collection]

Everybody, from the lazy kid in the back of the class, to the teacher, needs to relax sometimes. For that reason, you have a decent supply of games to fall back on when you need to see things run around in panic after being set on fire. Comes with a high class laptop, a half dozen mmo’s, and assorted other games. Also a handheld and some games for that as well. Time spent playing games on these units is reduced by a factor of 4 (i.e. you can spend 4 hours gaming and only 1 hour real time will pass).

Free - [Gamer’s Basic Spells]

These books detail the usage of a few different buffing spells, from minor regeneration to boosts to your speed and strength. A clever magician might spend a few weeks learning them, or maybe just specialize in just one. Of course, it all depends on if they have the Mana to use them all at once.

Import:

Player’s Party x2 (-100)

House Rule Import (-200)

~~~~~~

Chiharu

Origin: Player Two

Perks: Gamer’s Mind (-300); Gamer’s Titles (Free); Gamer’s Body (-300)