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So we need to spend time with Hana, for many reasons but in particular because it will help Hana stop feeling so much hate towards everyone involved in keeping Hazou away from her, and we need to spend time with Mari, just to help reassure her that we do still care about her even after Hana returned. In time, hopefully, Mari will remember that she does actually have positive qualities and stop rationalizing herself into self-hate, and Hana will be able to put the pain of those two years behind her and, with luck, maybe even forgive Mari.
This is my conclusion as well.

I do think Mari's mental health is potentially a concern even though she's retired and not in life or death danger any more, though. Her political role is a background one but very important, keeping Leaf held together, especially when Jiraiya is out of town. If she can't do that any more because she's a wreck, or worse she messes up really badly, that could be A Bad Thing.
 
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Okay, ideas for a plan:

1. Ask Hana for training for the Tournament. Time to learn all those juicy Iron Nerve techniques and trick!

2. See if Kagome would be willing to use specialized seals + special jounin taijutsu to act as a training partner for the Exam. I think the issue with full jounin might be that they're too good for Hazou to actually learn as much as he could. Kagome might be out of reach but approachable.

2a. "I always thought 'Kagome' was your last name, sensei. You sure you want to be Goketsu Kagome instead of... uh, whatever your first name is?"

3. Draw some Skywalker seals for Kagome to infuse.

4. Continue studying casino seals.

5. Training from hell oriented to strengthening chakra reserves. (Deliberately chakra drain to a minor consequence?)

6. Survey population for Uplift plans. I've been saying this forever, but Hazou should go out and ask the people he wants to help what they need instead of assuming he knows. Ask merchants what the number one way chakra powers could help their business. As clanless ninja what they need. Do they need better training opportunities? To be paid more for missions? What?
We should also look up Konoha research proposal formats and guidelines so we can start working on the proposal we want to give to Kabuto. The sooner we get that to him, the sooner we get feedback and the sooner we get to actually do it.

If you want to wait until after the tournament for that, that works too, but I'd rather we not default to that out of not thinking about it.
 
Okay, ideas for a plan:

1. Ask Hana for training for the Tournament. Time to learn all those juicy Iron Nerve techniques and trick!

2. See if Kagome would be willing to use specialized seals + special jounin taijutsu to act as a training partner for the Exam. I think the issue with full jounin might be that they're too good for Hazou to actually learn as much as he could. Kagome might be out of reach but approachable.

2a. "I always thought 'Kagome' was your last name, sensei. You sure you want to be Goketsu Kagome instead of... uh, whatever your first name is?"

3. Draw some Skywalker seals for Kagome to infuse.

4. Continue studying casino seals.

5. Training from hell oriented to strengthening chakra reserves. (Deliberately chakra drain to a minor consequence?)

6. Survey population for Uplift plans. I've been saying this forever, but Hazou should go out and ask the people he wants to help what they need instead of assuming he knows. Ask merchants what the number one way chakra powers could help their business. As clanless ninja what they need. Do they need better training opportunities? To be paid more for missions? What?
I like a lot of these ideas, but I think we should generally save the more open ended non-training ones until after the tournament.
 
"Huh." Kagome-sensei awkwardly shuffled his explosive tags out of sight. "Kagome. Gōketsu Kagome. Sorry about the trying-to-kill-you thing."

No, but seriously I thought 'Kagome' was his last name.

Boy, I know we all love Kagome-sensei but that man is as shady as hell. A missing sealmaster who previously did intelligence work before pretending to be dead for a decade plus. He still won't say what his original village is either. I seriously wonder.... did Jiraiya outright lie to his own intelligence apparatus? Did he tell them "no, it's cool, I know all about Kagome so you don't need to ask"?

Because otherwise I don't know how they haven't gone insane about this unknown quantity living in the Hokage's house.
 
Then shouldn't he be introducing himself as "Gōketsu Yuu"?
We only know 'Yuu' from Kagome internal dialogues, he's never actually told us his first name. Denied he even had one. When he got adopted into the Gōketsu, though, Jiraiya needed something for his first name, and took the only name he had for Kagome.

His legal name in Leaf is Gōketsu Kagome, and that means his last name has become his legal first name. As to whether he still thinks of himself as Kagome Yuu... eh, not like he's gonna tell anyone anyways.

e: guess I'm wrong about him never saying it. He did deny he even had one, though.
 
Then shouldn't he be introducing himself as "Gōketsu Yuu"?

Nope. He wouldn't tell anyone his first name, and only let it slip in a paranoid screaming rant one time (which is how we know it). Then Jiraiya gave his speech and now the village thinks it's his first name (because Kagome is a feminine first name and everyone just got confused about "A man named Kagome? Weird!" and didn't look deeper) and he just sort of never corrected anyone.

So his name went from "Kagome Yuu" to "Gouketsu Kagome", basically.
 
[x] Action Plan: Train With Hana

Ask Hana if she'll help train Hazō for the tournament whenever she's available over the course of the month. This will probably include taijutsu, alertness, advanced uses of the Iron Nerve Hazou wasn't ready for when he was younger that might be handy, and whatever else she thinks might help. She'll be the one doing the training, after all. Also she's an experienced jonin badass and we trust her judgement. Hopefully this will help Hana feel like she hasn't lost her son, and will be free to spend plenty of time with him despite the adoption situation.

Also Hazō can ask for some basic diplomacy lessons if there's time as a roundabout way of asking for help with the problems that Akane raised during the breakup. Maybe this leads into Hazō telling Hana about that if he can manage to make himself do it. Otherwise Hana can probably figure it out on her own, especially if she winds up asking around. In any event goodness knows Hazō could use any help interacting with people that he can get.

When we're not occupied with Hana we could keep working on Casino seals, since we're making progress on those.

- - -

My first plan proposal, so I'm happy to accept edit suggestions. I wish we could help Mari in the short term as well as Hana but I don't see a way since Hazou doesn't know she needs help yet. Perhaps we'll get that information soon. Other people have made some excellent suggestions like asking people how best to help them for Uplift purposes but I think that sort of thing is probably a post-tournament activity, since we've got limited time for training right now.
 
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The Iron Nerve seems to be a pretty straightforward bloodline as far as combat goes. What ideas for techniques do we have that Hana can teach Hazō?

The main thing we want to learn isn't combat. It's the iron nerve social skill/stunt. Whatever that is. But it may have political consequences to ask her to teach us that (obviously we say yes if she offers it herself), at least until she's repatriated. Also, we should probably spend a huge amount of time bonding with her before asking her for secrets.

As far as combat goes... Hana is a Melee Weapons spec, not a Taijutsu spec. I doubt she'll be much help here. Or at least, not as much as Gai or Mari would be.
 
The main thing we want to learn isn't combat. It's the iron nerve social skill/stunt. Whatever that is. But it may have political consequences to ask her to teach us that (obviously we say yes if she offers it herself), at least until she's repatriated. Also, we should probably spend a huge amount of time bonding with her before asking her for secrets.

As far as combat goes... Hana is a Melee Weapons spec, not a Taijutsu spec. I doubt she'll be much help here. Or at least, not as much as Gai or Mari would be.
While swords are her strongest combat skill, as a scary jonin her taijutsu is probably still considerably better than ours, and she'll be able to teach us how to combine taijutsu with our bloodline tricks in a way we can't learn from anyone else. Also, we want alertness training and hers appears to be sky high. She got through /Kagome's/ traps.
 
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While swords are her strongest combat skill, as a scary jonin her taijutsu is probably still considerably better than ours, and she'll be able to teach us how to combine taijutsu with our bloodline tricks in a way we can't learn from anyone else.

I... really doubt that. If she's already got MW then getting Taijutsu as well is incredibly redundant. You would pick up RW or jutsu or something, not a skill that covers exactly the same niche as the one you already have. If Hana is better at Taijutsu than Hazou is then her build is horribly optimised.
 
I... really doubt that. If she's already got MW then getting Taijutsu as well is incredibly redundant. You would pick up RW or jutsu or something, not a skill that covers exactly the same niche as the one you already have. If Hana is better at Taijutsu than Hazou is then her build is horribly optimised.
Ninja wouldn't want to be rendered helpless if they were caught without their weapons, and she's a thirty something scarily good jonin. That's a metric fuckload of XP to spend on secondary things that might come in handy because she's already mastered her primary focuses.
 
Ninja wouldn't want to be rendered helpless if they were caught without their weapons, and she's a thirty something scarily good jonin. That's a metric fuckload of XP to spend on secondary things that might come in handy because she's already mastered her primary focuses.

So she probably picked up Ninjutsu, not Taijutsu. Because Ninjutsu is something that's helpful even outside of that rare scenario, and is also useful in it.
 
So she probably picked up Ninjutsu, not Taijutsu. Because Ninjutsu is something that's helpful even outside of that rare scenrio, and is also useful in it.
I'm sure she picked up ninjutsu as well, but we're talking about someone with something like ten times the XP pool of Hazō to play with. She could get pretty good at a spread of ninjutsu, social skills, and a backup melee skill.
 
I see some people haven't discovered the secrets for voting without really voting.
Adhoc vote count started by MMKII on Sep 27, 2018 at 4:11 PM, finished with 111954 posts and 2 votes.

  • [X] Binge training: drink Jiraiya's alcohol stash and then challenge every single jonin to a spar
    [x] Action Plan: Train With Hana
 
The main thing we want to learn isn't combat. It's the iron nerve social skill/stunt. Whatever that is. But it may have political consequences to ask her to teach us that (obviously we say yes if she offers it herself), at least until she's repatriated. Also, we should probably spend a huge amount of time bonding with her before asking her for secrets.

As far as combat goes... Hana is a Melee Weapons spec, not a Taijutsu spec. I doubt she'll be much help here. Or at least, not as much as Gai or Mari would be.
You're being silly. She's not going to report Hazou to Mist for asking to learn bloodline stuff from her. At worst she'll say no. :p
 
Kakashi is probably a ninjutsu spec, right?
I'd expect he could kick our face in blindfolded with just taijutsu.
 
I'm sure she picked up ninjutsu as well, but we're talking about someone with something like ten times the XP pool of Hazō to play with. She could get pretty good at a spread of ninjutsu, social skills, and a backup melee skill.

There's no reason for her to take Taijutsu ever. That's XP she can spend on things she will ever realistically use, or on making her primary skill S-rank.

You're being silly. She's not going to report Hazou to Mist for asking to learn bloodline stuff from her. At worst she'll say no. :p

We don't know that. "At worst" could be she says yes, and Hazou gets caught using it in front of a Kurosawa, and now Leaf and Mist are at war over theft of clan secrets. We don't have the IC contextual knowledge to predict the consequences.

Kakashi is probably a ninjutsu spec, right?
I'd expect he could kick our face in blindfolded with just taijutsu.

Yeah. But Ninjutsu and Taijutsu do not overlap completely in their niches the way MW and Taijutsu do.
 
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While @MadScientist brings up a good point (Third party observation makes this awkward or dangerous) I'm reasonably certain that Hana would go pretty dang far to keep Hazou safe (and that in the most uncharitable interpretation that Leaf's ANBU and Jiraiya's political dissenters could have possibly imagined).

I would think it more likely that Hana says "No." or says yes and instructs us that "Remember Hazou: You have always known the secret Kurosawa bullshit techniques."
 
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