Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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The tag went off, the hue and cry began, and thoughts flashed through Hazō's mind like a flickering swarm of salmon flying up their birth river, sucking the bodily fluids out of everything they met and leaving only a desiccated wasteland behind them.

Two hundred people stampeding through a nigh-zero-visibility alcoholic cloud that was getting them more drunk by the moment, all headed straight towards a wall and a closed door. Pretty likely that some of them would trip on the steps of the porch and smash their faces in before getting trampled. Oh, and they were mostly teenagers with minimal experience with alcohol, maximal training at how to kill each other, and short tempers due to the heat Team Uplift had created and the stresses of the Chūnin Exams.

This might go badly.

What could he do? He had Goo Bomb seals, could he glue the stampede in place until they calmed down? That would trap them in the alcohol cloud and could lead to alcohol poisoning. The cloud would probably precipitate out in a minute or so, but who knew how much people would be affected before then; Noburi had been clear about the fact that he was purely guessing on the strength of the mixture and what difference it would make that it was being inhaled instead of ingested. Could Hazō disperse the cloud, maybe with a regular misterator? Toss an explosive tag above the cloud in hopes of blowing it away? Even Kagome-sensei would have said that was a bad idea, and the man loved explosives the way Lady Tsunade loved lupchanzen piss. (According to Mari-sensei, anyway.) Maybe throw an alarm seal on the steps in hopes that it would scare people into turning? That could just end up making things worse; the ninja in the crowd were panicked and tipsy, and frightening them might cause them to lash out. Hazō had already seen one ninja fight that had started at arm's reach and the fatalities had been horrific.

Of course, there were proctors around who would and could deal with the situation, and their presence meant that anything Hazō did would almost certainly out him as the one that had activated the tipserator. That would get him disqualified from the event and possibly from the Exams. Having his son, the former missing-nin, get ejected from the Exams would blacken Jiraiya's name and destroy his political credibility. The Leaf/Mist negotiations would go straight in the crapper and Jiraiya would have to step down as Hokage once they got home. That would make it far less likely for Naruto to be found; the loss of both their jinchūriki and the God of Shinobi would make Leaf look like a lame deer to its international rivals. It would be about the same as flinging wide the gates of the city and posting a 'please attack here' sign.

Yeah, no.

He dove forward off the porch, making the handseals for Hiding Like A Mole in midair, and slid into the lawn like an otter sliding into the water. There was barely enough chakra in his coils to power the jutsu, but he forced it through and clamped down on the resultant shaking of his muscles and the taste of puke in the back of his throat as his body rebelled at what he was doing to it. Instead he pulled out a Tunneler's Friend seal to ensure that he didn't have to surface to breathe, then turned and swam through the dirt in his best estimate of the direction to where the rest of SuperTeam Leaf waited.

He scouted around until he found the cluster of roots that signaled the presence of the hedge maze and then, very cautiously, stuck his head up out of the dirt just far enough that he could see. It took a couple attempts to find the edge of the maze, but eventually he managed it.

He saw with relief that not only were Keiko, Noburi, and the others standing under the awning out on the lawn, but there were no proctors around. He still chose to stay underground until he could come up near them; no point in coming up early and being spotted running across the lawn.

"You guys won't believe this—" he began.

"Be silent."

Hazō blinked. Nara was not his normal apathetic and sardonic self. His eyes were hard, and his voice cut like the end of a whip.

"What? But—" It was only then that he consciously registered the shouting and occasional screaming that could be distantly heard from the direction of the stampede.

"Hinata, current counts? Physical condition only."

The Hyūga heiress's eyes were closed, the veins around her temples bulging as she focused entirely on her bloodline and its omnivision. "Physical condition only, aye. Six subjects, condition one. Several dozen, condition two. Remainder at condition three except for fifteen or twenty in condition four, all of them well separated from the main group. Still getting exact counts."

Hazō blinked, flicking back through the Leaf protocols that he, Keiko, and Noburi had been studying ever since their adoption. Reporting your status to team members needed to be efficient and unambiguous, so Leaf had invented the PMC protocol. Physical, Mental, Chakra, each a rating from 1-5. Five was uninjured, confident, or maximum capacity. One was 'on the edge of death' or 'mentally disabled'. Hazō was currently in condition 542—uninjured, slightly rattled, near chakra exhaustion but not completely empty. Hyūga was saying that there were six people at the front of the house who were in the process of dying from physical injuries. Injuries that had presumably been suffered in the stampede that had started because of some idiot throwing an explosive tag above the clustered event participants. The participants who had been clustered because Hazō had convinced Keiko to talk Akane into using her jutsu to herd them all together while SuperTeam Leaf got to safety.

His face paled and he looked to Akane. She met him with a flat glare and turned away.

"I think—" Hazō began.

"Be. Silent." Nara waited for Hazō to stop. "If this is traced to you and any of those people die then every single Leaf ninja will be ejected from the Exams and sent home immediately. As such, we all need to cooperate to cover for your stupidity. Do not make this harder than it needs to be. The story is that we all felt the heat jutsu begin and determined that it was an attack. We abandoned the event and came here for mutual defense. We were all here with our henges up the entire time. Hinata activated her bloodline when we heard the screaming begin, but was too late to see who had caused it." He glared pointedly at Hazō.

"I didn't do it!" Hazō protested. "Someone threw an explosive tag in the air, but it wasn't me. That's what started the whole mess. They can't blame me. I wasn't the one who caused the disaster!"

Nara's glare only intensified. "I am well aware that you did not set the building on fire. You merely doused it in oil and then stood outside handing out lit torches to children passing by."

"But—"

"Let it go, Hazō," Keiko said wearily. "This is my mistake. I did not make sufficient allowance for enemy action."

"I should go help," Noburi said, clearly rattled. "The six people dying—how many are ninja? They tend to be tougher than civilians so all else equal I would triage them second. Given that this is the Exams though, I wouldn't want it to look like—"

"Oh, the six are just the ninja," Hyūga said. "There's eleven civilians dying."

Noburi, Hazō, and Keiko all stared at her in disbelief.

"Did you only report the ninja casualties?" Hazō asked calmly.

She nodded. "Of course." She tipped her head slightly, her focus clearly shifting. "The crowd was relatively evenly split between ninja and civilians, but the civilians took the brunt of the injuries. Looks like...eleven in condition one, thirty or forty in condition two, the rest mostly in condition three, a handful in condition four." She paused, then nodded. "Oh, and someone threw a fire jutsu during the scuffle; part of it went through the window into the sitting room and set some drapes on fire. I wasn't sure if it was going to spread, but it has. The house probably isn't salvageable, but at least there's no one in it—ninja or civilian. I've looked carefully."

Noburi turned towards the house, his face ashen. "I need to g—"

"You need to sit down and not make this worse," Nara said sharply. "You are an apprentice medic-nin. You will not make a significant difference, but your presence will open Leaf up to a wide array of political consequences. You will be accused of favoritism regardless of whom you work on first. If anyone dies in your care it will be considered you causing a fatality and we will all definitely be ejected from the Exams. Now sit down and be quiet."

Noburi looked at Keiko, but she was seated on the grass with her arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the ground. "Keiko?"

She nodded without looking up. Noburi considered that for a moment, then sat down next to her. He took care not to sit too close and he said nothing, choosing instead to just be there.

"In case you hadn't figured it out yet," Yamanaka said coldly, "you're not in the alliance anymore. Don't expect us to be telling you where or when events start. If we run into you on the field, don't expect us to go easy, either."

Hazō nodded, not trusting himself to say anything in response. He took a step towards Akane, reaching out with one hand, but she turned a glare of such venom on him that he stepped back and sat down next to his sibs without saying anything.

"One piece of good news," Hyūga said, clearly forcing herself to look for silver linings. "Sakamoto Shiina, the one with the invisibility bloodline. She's one of the people in condition one."

Hazō was pleased to see that no one received this news with unbridled joy. Reactions were muted at best, people recognizing that this was a morsel of positive interpretation labeled across a five-course meal of tragedy.

"How did it all happen?" Noburi asked after a few minutes. "This many people, this injured? That can't just be from people getting stepped on, can it?"

"No," Hyūga said calmly. She had deactivated her bloodline, possibly to conserve chakra and possibly because she couldn't stand to watch. She was flicking it on for a few seconds every five minutes or so, then off again. "Several ninja in the center of the crowd attempted to fight their way free. Mostly with taijutsu, but one of them used a Water Element technique. Fighting spread, and then the entire group came out of the mist. Several people tripped on the steps and were trampled. Those who didn't fall and add to the pileup slammed into the door and some people were crushed against the wall...it went on from there."

She turned her Byakugan on for a few seconds, then stood up. "Finally. Someone just said that they're shutting the event down. Proctors are being sent to sweep the grounds and the house for stragglers and take us back to barracks."

No sooner had she finished speaking than a proctor came around the corner of the house a few dozen yards away across the grass. He saw them and shifted into a jog.

"Hey! You lot! Event is over. Everyone back to barracks, now!"


Ren closed the outer door to her apartments and locked it. She shifted the heavy bureau over to block the door. She searched the apartment to be sure no one was there. She went into the bedroom, locked that door, and set the draft sock along the bottom to muffle sound. She searched the room again to make sure no on was there. She wound two strips of bandage around her hands.

And then she screamed out her rage and frustration, hands flashing as she hurled weapon after weapon into the wooden training dummy by the wall. When the steel was exhausted, she leaped forward and smashed chakra-enhanced punches into the dummy until it was nothing but a stump and a mass of splintered wreckage. She pounded on the stump, transmuting all the frustrated rage in her soul into empowered punches, kicks, and elbow strikes until the ravening fires of her temper had calmed themselves to a level that the Iron Nerve and decades of training could conceal.

Outward calm restored, she left.


"Thank you all for coming," said Ren, Fifth Mizukage of the Village Hidden in the Mist. Or, as Jiraiya had come to think of her: 'That Woman'. Her poised half-smile was just as infuriating as it always was.

Jiraiya knew that there was absolutely nothing good that could happen during this meeting. He'd been talking with the Raikage about lumber—Lightning needed it, Fire had it, wasn't it nice when things fit together?—when a messenger had all but physically dragged them off to the main conference room without saying anything about the content of the upcoming meeting. Worse, all of the other Kage had shown up and were now seated around the table.

He found himself idly taking bets on whether Hazō had set Mist on fire, Keiko had ordered her pangolins to tear it to shreds, Neji had done something even more idiotic than either of those things, Akatsuki was attacking out of the sun while riding on two-headed purple dragons, or (most unlikely of all) That Woman had actually shown a real human emotion.

"I regret to announce that someone attacked the Nari mansion while the fourth event was underway," said That Woman. "No one was killed, but six of the candidates are in critical condition, being operated on as we speak. It's uncertain if any of them will survive, but Mist is devoting every resource to their care."

"What happened?" demanded A, the ruler of the Land of Lightning with whom Jiraiya had been meeting minutes ago. A was a huge man, just as broad in the chest as Jiraiya but even taller. The fact that, even at a formal summit like this one, he never wore more than a flak jacket on his torso was purely an intimidation move. Well, and bragging. But mostly the intimidation. Probably. Regardless, he was a powerful speaker and a nigh-invulnerable nightmare of a combatant, so when he spoke in his current tone he tended to get quick answers.

"Details are still coming in," That Woman said, nodding politely to the angry Raikage. "What we know thus far is that a large-scale effect, most likely a fire jutsu, was used to raise the temperature in the house and most of the grounds to uncomfortable levels. A pocket of cool air was left on the front lawn, so everyone gathered there. Then—"

"A fire jutsu, eh?" A growled, looking daggers at Jiraiya. "What do you know about this, Toad man?"

Jiraiya met A's gaze calmly, not allowing his body to betray anything of his thoughts as he considered his next moves. Unlike most men his size, A was fast. Faster than Jiraiya. He did like his showy moves though—that tended to be the case with ninja who had found some defensive jutsu. They started to lean on it, taking unnecessary risks in order to gain psychological advantage. He would probably kick the conference table out of the way instead of simply leaping across it, which would give Jiraiya time for one technique. The sensible move would be an immediate Needle Jizo to hold off the initial attack, then blow the floor, drop down one level and go out a window so he could open range; fighting A in hand-to-hand was so obviously a sucker's game that even Sunny would have thought twice before stepping up to that table.

He kept all those thoughts off his face as he nodded politely to the other man. "Nothing. This is the first I'm hearing about it. Still, this was a technique that affected the entire inside of a large building and most of the grounds around it? And, from the sound of it, whoever cast the technique sustained it for at least fifteen or twenty minutes if everyone actually left the building and gathered together. That doesn't sound like something a genin, or even a team of genin, could pull off. If nothing else, they wouldn't have the reserves." Actually, it sounded like exactly the sort of thing that Akane could pull off with that weird Mountain jutsu of hers that didn't need to be sustained and barely cost any chakra. "No, it sounds much more like an attack by outsiders...either looking to set us at each other's throats or to destroy the cream of the next generation of ninja. That's just my initial thought, though. I admit that with this little information I could easily be wrong."


"If I may," That Woman said politely, "there's more. After everyone was assembled someone used...we don't know what. Perhaps a bloodline limit? There was a cone of fog, but the fog was made of alcohol, not water. It covered the entire assembly aside from a few people who had already begun to disperse. The burning of alcohol in the eyes distracted everyone long enough that they breathed it in and became slightly impaired.

"Things could perhaps have been salvaged at this point, except someone threw an explosive tag in the air."

Jiraiya concealed a wince.

"Don't I recall your brood throwing explosive tags in the air to mark their location during the swamp event, Jiraiya?" asked the Kazekage. He barely even tried to disguise the gleeful venom underlying the calm words. "You know, when they opted to trade instead of fight?"

"It's good to see that your memory is still sharp, Rasa. Yes, my kids used explosives as signalling devices in the swamp. I seem to recall, however, that some of your students actually threw them at people?" He made a show of frowning. "Wasn't there something about one of A's candidates being medevac'd from the swamp after one of your kids placed a tag a little too close?"

"Don't try—"

"Gentlemen, if I may finish?" That Woman said sweetly. "Someone called out words to the effect of 'we're under attack, get to the house!' This set off a stampede towards the house, the door of which was closed. One or more ninja in the center of the group tried to fight their way out with taijutsu, and one used a Water Element technique. We are still working to identify exactly who these people were and what the technique was. During the fighting, several people tripped and were trampled. When the group came out of the fog several more people went down on the steps up to the porch, causing a pileup. Fortunately, it was mostly just civilians in the pileup; all but two of the ninja managed to leap clear when they saw what was happening. One of the two that fell, Chisaka Fumihiro from Rock, has a compound fracture of his knee; the other, Doigawa Hansuke from Sand, had one hand crushed and a concussion. They are both out of danger and resting comfortably.

"Those who made it up the steps came up against the wall of the house and failed to get the door open before others ran into them from behind. Several ninja, their judgement impaired by the alcohol, were startled into lashing out. This is where the remainder of the injuries occurred."

"I seem to recall the Hiding in the Mist jutsu being something of a trademark here," the Kazekage said quietly.

"Hiding in the Mist blankets an area, not a cone, and is comprised of water, not alcohol," That Woman said calmly. "Now, proctors were on the scene almost immediately, and managed to shut down the fighting before anyone was killed. Twelve proctors were hospitalized as a result of this."

That Woman paused, surveying her audience. "Now, as you know, the essence of the fourth event was to remain in henge and disguise your nature as a ninja. Being seen without your henge meant disqualification, a two-hundred point penalty, and the inability to earn positive points during the final ballot process. Twelve Leaf nin—Teams Gōketsu, Kurenai, Asuma, and Clanless—had found a cool zone at the back of the house and were never involved in the stampede at all. Another—"

"Hmmmm," said A. Jiraiya outwardly ignored him.

"Another twenty-two people maintained their henge, either because they left the cluster before the attack happened or because they used an escape jutsu immediately afterwards. Everyone else's henge popped during the struggle.

"Given the circumstances of the attack, we have decided to declare the fourth event a mistrial. No points will be gained or lost, not even for those who were disqualified before the rather dramatic ending. The Exams will continue, although we're going to delay the fifth event slightly. As per the standard policy, the exact start time is need-to-know."

Jiraiya did not allow the groan to reach his face, much less the threshold of audibility. There was no way that this hadn't been Hazō and the others. How was he going to conceal their involvement while still looking no less than completely helpful to the investigation?

"We will, of course, be conducting a thorough investigation of what happened. We ask that those of you with candidates that possess sensory bloodlines or abilities make them available to us. A collaborative fact-finding will be much quicker to produce answers."

Relief soared as he saw the opportunity that That Woman had (quite probably deliberately) handed him. "Leaf is glad to help," Jiraiya said. "Between the Inuzuka and Aburame tracking abilities and the Byakugan we should be able to find whatever information is available. Once we have some suspects, I can have the Yamanaka mind-dive them to confirm their guilt."

"You are not mind-diving my students!" snapped the Tschuikage. "Most of them are clan heirs or the students of high-ranking ninja. They are privy to state secrets that cannot be risked."

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his seat, eyeing his opposite number carefully. "Of course," he said. He pursed his lips in thought. "How about this? No Yamanaka, but when the kids are interviewed their Kage will be in the room. We'll be able to declassify things that can be declassified in order to move the investigation along, and also to wave off topics that can't be."

"That will slow things down tremendously," That Woman pointed out. "Even if each interview were only an hour, it would be weeks to get through all of them if we are limited by the time the five of us can spare."

Jiraiya spread his hands. "I'm open to suggestions."

That Woman considered him for a moment, then turned back to the table. "The next step—"

A small voice in the back of his head was already planning his next conversation with the kids; it had started pondering whether or not it was better to tenderize before flaying and salting. Another part wished he had some willowbark tea for the pounding headache that was brewing.


No one spoke until they were in the barracks with the door of their room locked behind them and had swept for eavesdroppers, seals, and Kozu bodyparts. Noburi sat down on his bunk with a tired sigh, pulling off his forehead protector and turning it idly in his hands. Keiko flopped down on hers and rolled to face the wall.

"Guys..."

Noburi waved it off. "This isn't on you, Hazō," he said, not looking up. "All three of us went along. I could have refused to mix the tipserator or tried to talk you out of it, but I thought it sounded great. Flip the tables, right? They screwed us so we'd change the game under them. I didn't think this could happen."

"It's my fault," Keiko mumbled into the wall. "It's my job to find the failure modes and fix them. That's my one job on this team, to use my bloodline such that we don't get in trouble. One job, and I failed."

Ice flooded through Hazō's veins. How could she think that?! She was so much more. She was—

"Oh, shut up, Keiko."

Hazō's thought screeched to a halt and he turned to stare at Noburi. His brother's voice was utterly exhausted, but his words....

"Sorry," Keiko mumbled, sniffling.

"I swear by the Sage, we should number these conversations to save time," Noburi said, the tiniest hint of amusement in his tone. "Let's call this one 'Conversation #1'. It goes like this:"

His voice shifted up into a falsetto and he clapped both hands to his face in simulated horror. "Oh, Hazō and Noburi, I'm so sorry that I'm awful at everything! My value to this team is only my bloodline-enhanced superbrain and its ability to keep us out of trouble...no, wait, it's only my Pangolin Summoning contract...no, wait, it's only my ability to shoot flies out of the air at sixty paces with my kunai...no, wait, it's...."

His voice shifted down into his normal register. "No, Keiko, that's not right! We value you for so much more than whichever single part of yourself that you happen to be focusing on right now while blocking out all your other valuable traits."

Once more his voice changed, shifting into a doofy mockery of Hazō's. "Der, uh, yah, Keiko! You're the bestest! Who would keep me from being a doofy doofus if you weren't here, huh?"

Making a crying person laugh usually leads to hiccups. Today was no exception.

"Very funny, Noburi," Hazō said sourly.

"Well, those are all excellent points, Noburi," Noburi said in his Keiko-falsetto. "As they always are because you're so insightful and socially accomplished. I could never be like that. Even if I'm an incredible fighter, so brilliant that the Nara blackmailed Jiraiya to get me, a summoner, a logistics expert, blah blah blah, I'm still terrible with people."

"Hur, don't think that way, Keiko! You just different!" said not-Hazō's mockery of a voice.

"What he means, Keiko," said a purring and overblown simulation of Mari-sensei, "is that you're an introvert but that doesn't mean you're bad with people. It just means you prefer small groups and more structured engagement. It's a different style of communication that works much better in some situations than Noburi's extroversion. He's good at making initial contacts. You're good at working on a team without letting your ego get in the way, at keeping everything on track. Different, not better or worse."

"Hey, Mari-sensei!" Noburi's own voice said. "That's not fair! I work great on a team!"

"Of course you do, Noburi," said pseudo-Mari-sensei. "But—"

"Fine," Keiko said, rolling over and sitting up. The word was broken by a hiccup. "Stop. Your acting skills are not as good as you think they are." She wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a rag from her pocket. It took her two tries because the hiccups kept interfering.

"Says you." The other boy was forcing smugness into his voice, but the energy just wasn't there to be convincing. His hands collapsed back to his lap, turning the forehead protector so he could look at the Leaf symbol on it.

Silence fell as no one knew what to say.

After a minute or so, Noburi spoke again. "Are they going to kick us out, do you think? Or killbox us again?"

"We didn't do it!" Hazō protested, shifting uncomfortably as he looked back and forth between his sibs. "Sure, we did the mist and the heat, but we didn't make anyone throw explosives. We didn't make anyone start punching or throwing jutsu. We didn't make people run all the same direction instead of spreading out. It would be wildly unfair for them to accuse us. Jiraiya would eat them for lunch."

"Of course they will blame us, Hazō," Keiko said miserably. "This was our plan that I optimized and we all cooperated on. Its consequences are our fault."

Hazō looked mulish. "No. It. Was. Not. People are responsible for themselves. Those people could have done any number of things; it's not on us that they made bad decisions."

Keiko sighed. "Fine. Regardless, Nara made clear that the rest of the Leaf teams will not just keep quiet but will actively collude to protect us. I'm sure Jiraiya knows it's us and will also work to muddy the waters. It all happened quickly, and it was complicated and hard to follow, so that will help. If the house burns then it will destroy a lot of evidence. The smoke and ash in the air will make it harder for scent-based trackers. The jutsu is long expired so there won't be any clear delineation between which areas were affected and which were not.

"More important is that we have alienated all of the other Leaf teams. We will need to locate the next event—assuming there is one—on our own. It is better to have something on which to focus my thoughts instead of to dwell on the morass of negativity that is life, so how do we find it?"

---

XP AWARD: 3

FP AWARD: 2

The update started at about 10am and ended at about 5pm. You are confined to your barracks and expected to stay in your rooms until instructed otherwise; meals will be provided. You are not to talk to other candidates until given the all-clear.

The event has been declared a mistrial and will be treated as though it never happened insofar as your score and other Exam-related matters are concerned. You were not told anything about if there is another event or when it might start. Presumably this is because you were the leading candidates in the prior event and therefore not entitled to this information.

Keiko's expectation is that someone will be along to take your statements soon. Once everyone's statements have been taken things will temporarily return to normal. The Mizukage is strongly motivated to make everything look normal as much as possible, so the Exams will continue while the investigation is ongoing. She guesses that you will be allowed out of the barracks but not out of the city, and that getting caught attempting to leave the city would regard in heavy scrutiny that you can ill afford.

Finally, in honor of @Cariyaga's birthday we decided to be nice and declare that Shiina was one of the heavily-injured ninja. You're welcome!

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at 12pm London time.