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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Velorien said:
Naruto, roughly once every four people.
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Bwahahaha, this line. XD


Roomba said:
Man, if we make it out of this in one piece, it's going to be impossible for Mari to reverse course and find some manner of redemption. She seems to have resigned herself to being everything she hates about herself, and is running completely in mission mode, with Hazou as her anchor. Her cutting Keiko off this chapter is a really bad sign - it means she doesn't see a future for herself, and is trying to limit damage she could do by disappearing.

And now Ami wants to talk to her, too. You know, at this point, another breakdown might be the preferable course of action for her...
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I wonder if Ami could help fix Mari-sensei's issues if we asked?

Lord Marshal said:
1)Meet her
2)Say Sorry, for we failed her, we are Uplift, but she was the one that stopped the massacre, while we did accept it.
3)Say sorry for saying "I won't allow", we are under pressure and we don't really know when we need to act as Clan Head to help keep the family united and when not do that, that was not the time.
4)But we're also hurt: She felt the need to explain it as something that simply was, as if we would have forced her to keep such deal against her wishes, do she trust us so little? Did she really think we would have ignored her wishes if she simply said "I can't do this anymore"? Did she really think we would have just took the scroll from her and ignored her?
5)We are also humans, while we should have, and we should have, realized the intent behind her request, she should not fear to give voice to her needs because of a biased view of her (lack of) importance. Even if she feels her needs are not important, for us they are. And as it happened many times, if she does not talk about what she wants, at a certain point she will explode(It already happened).
Therefore Keiko needs to accept that she HAS needs, and such needs are important, if not because we consider them important, because sooner or later she express them, and not in calm and measured way.
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This is a decent framework, I think. Although I'm not sure about #4. It might not be the right time to talk about being hurt.

Maybe the best we can do is to accept her decision and offer to work together to find another way to achieve the goal of fostering peace on the 7th Path that was behind the original idea. We could pull in Mari and Ami and anyone else Keiko wants to bring in to look at the problem and find a way to stop the awfulness over there that also keeps clan finances afloat. Selling seals of economic rather than military importance might be one alternative route to look at, as has been suggested.
 
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On a separate note, the lesson to learn here is this: Practical solutions aren't enough. Communication and a shared emotional context can ultimately matter a lot more. People will often care more about what they can trust you to do, rather than what you're actually doing.

Our failure with Keiko wasn't that we didn't engage with the problem. We actually put a lot of thought and energy into making the clan less dependent on Pangolin blood money, and had further plans in the pipeline. What we failed to do, is communicate all of this to her, and convince her that we cared, not just as a matter of strategy, but actually gave a shit about the genocide. And we absolutely did, given the amount of heated arguments we've had about it, we just didn't think it was important to convince her of this, or support her in her distress. It is an ongoing failure of ours, to only care about people once they start imploding and causing problems.

On that note, Mari is a time-bomb and we should absolutely touch base with her asap. Make some effort at mending fences with Keiko, and in general rally the clan together. Everyone must be feeling rather down after all this.
 
Mari just launched an all-out social attack against Keiko, no doubt operating on Hazou's claim of "my responsibility."

She of course was acting out of "the best interests of the clan", but that was goddamn out of line. Keiko is clan.

So.

I'm tempted to say "discipline Mari", but frankly I feel like that might be what she wants. She's still in "I can't help being a huge bitch" mode, because she's terrified of taking personal responsibility for anything.

Therefore:

[X] Action Plan: Those Who Would Harm Their Teammates Are Even Lower Than That
  • Order Mari to personally apologize to Keiko, admit her fault in front of the whole clan, and make what restitution Keiko should deem necessary.
    • "My responsibility, not yours" extends only to actions Mari takes in the interests of the betterment of the clan.
    • Deliberately attempting to manipulate one of the clan is not acting in its interests.
    • What's more, Mari failed to achieve her objective - retaining the contract - and has done quite possibly irreparable harm in the process.
    • By both motive and consequence, she has acted against express orders and betrayed her own clan.
    • Therefore she will not argue or weasel regarding whatever discipline Hazou hands down.
 
Good for Keiko. I just hope she can start digging herself out with Tenten and Shika's help.

Of course, if Cloud, Stone and others brought the Skywalker designs home and their villages' Summons know about the Pagolin's military advantages then all of the Pagolin's many, many enemies might start getting Seal Lend Lease just as the Pagolin's get cut off unexpectedly and rolled up by an Animals of Farthing Wood global alliance but hey. Progress.
 
TaliesinSkye said:
This is a decent framework, I think. Although I'm not sure about #4. It might not be the right time to talk about being hurt.
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it's now or never.
Keiko it's not a child, and trying to cuddle her sanitizing Hazou feeling is just going to make thing worse in the future.
We do it with respect, clarifying it was a mistake, but it's important, because it shows Keiko one vital thing she never considered.
Her self-loathing hurts other people, her own warped view of herself is something she accept because it's "her" view, and so it's fine, because what can happen? She feels bad, and it's fine.
It doesn't work like that.

Evenstar said:
[X] Action Plan: Those Who Would Harm Their Teammates Are Even Lower Than That
  • Order Mari to personally apologize to Keiko, admit her fault in front of the whole clan, and make what restitution Keiko should deem necessary.
    • "My responsibility, not yours" extends only to actions Mari takes in the interests of the betterment of the clan.
    • Deliberately attempting to manipulate one of the clan is not acting in its interests.
    • What's more, Mari failed to achieve her objective - retaining the contract - and has done quite possibly irreparable harm in the process.
    • By both motive and consequence, she has acted against express orders and betrayed her own clan.
    • Therefore she will not argue or weasel regarding whatever discipline Hazou hands down.
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Good start, talking with Mari, but i feel that ordering her is going to go nowhere.
We need to talk with her, i have no idea how, but actually talk to her.
And let's be clear, we gave her the ok, the told her it was our responsibility, saying "Well, now that shit happens it's yours" when we knew something like that could happen...not a good idea, in my opinion.
 
Well let's just move on. We should meet with Sasuke and hash out an arrangement. Have Akane go make ice and sell it in hot springs. Start looking for blackmail with criminal organizations. And contact Mist Yakuza for advice on taking over leafs underworld
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Once Keiko gets us the market analysis of seal value we should have a line to the effect of 'make and sell as many of the highest-value seals as Hazou or Kagome can manage'. We're still good for the immediate future because of the last shipment to the Pangolins, but the money's most useful to us right now when we can try to exchange it for political favour and, potentially, a swung vote.
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We may also want to consider the need for establishing steady income streams with investments, since we just lost our cash cow for the time being. We need to stay revenue positive or we'll be in trouble down the line, and members of the clan personally buoying finances by spending their time on it instead of on other things isn't always going to be ideal.

Evenstar said:
    • What's more, Mari failed to achieve her objective - retaining the contract - and has done quite possibly irreparable harm in the process.
    • By both motive and consequence, she has acted against express orders and betrayed her own clan.
    • Therefore she will not argue or weasel regarding whatever discipline Hazou hands down.
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This is going too far, I feel like. We don't need to beat her over the head with how the move wasn't ideal. She's very well inclined to feel like manipulating people is bad as it is. She'll punish herself FAR more than we ever could, and in a way that will be far from helpful. I think a gentle aside about not manipulating members of the family is probably enough.
 
Cariyaga said:
What makes you think contacting Mist Yakuza would go any more smoothly than contacting Ami?

Also I'd rather sell ice and salt to summons rather than dealing with the human path at all.
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Cause we aren't in a rush. Just send it with a merchant. And can't sell to summons with Kei hating us right now. Gotta wait till Noburi gets the gig
 
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I think this was a fantastic chapter to read. I especially liked the wedding scene and the scene at Tenten's place. Both were super enjoyable and supersupersuperfuckingdeeduper cute. I'm glad Ami made it! Look's like @Lailoken called it.

From a player perspective (and at the risk of coming across as a Salty Sam) the implications (direct and indirect) of this chapter are pretty disheartening to me.
 
Velorien said:
A wedding. Her wedding. For fourteen years, she had been completely certain that she would be single for the rest of her life, neither worthy enough to marry out of love, nor worth enough to marry in the name of politics.
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Keiko, age 1 : Dada. I will die alone.

Ami, age 5: ...at least she started speaking in full sentences right off the bat?
 
Oneiros said:
Start looking for blackmail with criminal organizations
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Oneiros said:
And contact Mist Yakuza for advice on taking over leafs underworld
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"Conquer the underworld" i'm fairly sure it's something we can do when the political situation is actually stable, instead of a political hornet nest ready to go apeshit on our Clan.
Let's concentrate on:
1)The Hat
2)The Scrolls
3)The clusterfuck that is our social situation and our allies(that we still didn't talk with) and possible allies(Hi, Hinata and her team) that we still did not talk with, especially Hinata, our best bet to have an allied Hyuga clan in the future commanded by a NOT crazy ninja
4)Adoption nominee and informal allies, much like Ami did.

Velorien said:
"That's right," Yūichi said. "Lady Ami pointed out that now the Fifth has set the precedent for common-borns founding new clans, there's no legal reason for us all not to come together as the new Shimura. As a special favour, she's even willing to go over the basics of running a clan with us before she goes home."

"I told you, it's just Ami to friends," Ami said. "I'm no clan bigshot back home. If anything, I'm hovering around the edges of the system—they won't pull me in and they can't kick me out. They only sent me here because the Mizukage wanted to get me out of her hair. Funny how fate sometimes draws people together, huh?"

"A source of never-ending entertainment," Kei observed in a deadpan voice.

"Sure is. I figured I'd look around the mission office while I was waiting for all the diplomats to be ready to receive me, and I took the chance to chat with a bunch of ninja, and it just so happened that Yūichi was hanging around trying to find a chūnin-level mission that hadn't already been assigned to clan ninja. So when the diplomatic staff were trying to pick my official escort, I asked them to specifically not assign that free chūnin downstairs who made me feel uncomfortable because he kept watching me like a hawk the whole time I was there."

Ami winked at Yūichi.

"But first things first."
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Don't you need the approval of the other clans to actually create a clan? I'm fairly sure Jiraiya needed the other to fill the paperwork, under threat of Rasengan i would like to add.
That and the whole "Mist Ninja runs a Leaf clans" is something that ends with ANBU at your door, but without an Hokage it's understandable they would not, political situation is too chaotic.

But hey! Our favor to Ami could be "Cancel your favor with Shimura and give them to us" and then we can add the Shimura as a branch family?
 
Is it worthwhile trying to convince Keiko to tell the Pangolins that breaking the contract is Hazo's idea, rather than hers? She is, after all, neither the sealmaster responsible for producing the seals nor the clan head responsible for selling them. The transfer of the Head position makes for a reasonable "reason" behind the sudden about-face, rather than their summoner suddenly and (to them) inexplicably betraying them.

If Keiko sells it as her idea, the Pangolins dislike both her and us. If it's our idea and she wasn't able to stop it, they dislike us but her relationship with them takes a smaller hit. It's also a positive signal to her that we're willing to accede to her stance on the issue.
 
Alright, so, to be blunt the idea of a Summon Path alliance backed by us selling them arms is untenable in the long term. It's a poor solution. All it takes is for Hazou and Kagome to bite the dust and then the entire thing falls apart, and a big clan alliance would put a hell of an assassination target on their backs if it got out. Hell, it's the case with the current deal. Any strategy that relies on a Summon Path clan receiving material support from their Human Path summoner could end at any moment. The Pangolins perhaps have not realized this, and their current expansion shows it - have they even considered what would happen if Keiko was no longer able or willing to provide them with seals, for any reason?

Keiko clearly is conflicted on what to do, and doesn't want to stop being the Pangolin summoner. But she does want to stop selling weapons to them, so they'll stop doing bad shit she doesn't approve of. So, as the Goketsu clan head I think we should be the ones to break off the deal, leaving Keiko blameless. We can even give perfectly legitimate and true reasons. With the death of Jiraiya our clan is heavily weakened, and has lost one of its three seal masters, thus is not able to produce as many seals per month. Further, that has weakened our clan militarily, necessitating we adopt more people into the clan, which in turn requires that we provides more seals to arm them to our standards in order to offset this. Further, Leaf as a whole has been weakened by the deaths on Nagi Island, and the potential for war is still high, therefore the Tower's demand for seals will logically be higher and thus require more of our time. So, we can just send the big Pangolin an apologetic note that we quite simply can no longer meet our obligations. Maybe we provide an additional month of seals, or half that, for free as an apology and as a way to give the Pangolins enough that they can withdraw from territory they think they can't hold in good order and keep themselves from experiencing losses. Perhaps also an additional guarantee of seal support in the face of imminent annihilation, or a lesser deal that would give them the bare minimum seal support to keep them from being overwhelmed, or a phased ending of the deal rather than an immediate one.

Keiko could probably also get some Nara help to do an analysis of things to convince the Pangolins that they've made a major strategic blunder by conquering so much territory so quickly, while relying on resources they don't actually control the production of to do it.

Lord Marshal said:
Don't you need the approval of the other clans to actually create a clan? I'm fairly sure Jiraiya needed the other to fill the paperwork, under threat of Rasengan i would like to add.
That and the whole "Mist Ninja runs a Leaf clans" is something that ends with ANBU at your door, but without an Hokage it's understandable they would not, political situation is too chaotic.
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I think the idea is maybe that with Leaf weakened a sufficiently large group of civilians who want to form a clan and have a legitimate enough reason to do so might be able to pressure the existing clans due to needing to avoid internal strife. If a bunch of jonin and chunin say "we want this" and you can't afford to lose them? Well, you have little choice but to capitulate, especially with precedent already set.
 
Velorien said:
"Indeed. Granted, while the idea of sending an unauthorised message of unconfirmed content to the sovereign head of a foreign state is merely sheer lunacy and guaranteed to have you tried for treason, you could instead theoretically apply to the diplomatic corps, which handles urgent international missives, such as calls for military aid, in the Hokage's absence. However, any messages that pass through their hands are heavily scrutinised, at times even rewritten to stymie secret codes, at which point your intent would be discovered. You are, need I remind you, under suspicion as foreign shinobi who have lived in Leaf for less than a year. Should you attempt to facilitate entry by an agent of your village of origin, for any reason but the Hokage's direct order, your reputation will take a hit from which it may never recover. This without considering the fact that, upon investigation, the agent will be revealed to be a jōnin infiltration specialist (my best guess as to Mori's specialisation) belonging to one of your "former" clans. On reflection, perhaps I rejected the treason idea too hastily."
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-and here I was worried that I was being unacceptably blunt in my conservative description of this entire misbegotten mooncalf of a boondoggle. Thank you Nara.



Velorien said:
"I can field that one, I regret to say," Shikamaru's voice came from the marquee entrance. "After a certain unfortunate act of insensitivity on my part, Mori arranged a meeting and enlightened me as to my responsibility for Keiko's welfare as her husband-to-be. Once my mental faculties were restored, she engaged me in unrelated political discussion. A number of subjects were lightly touched on, one of them being a passing mention of the dangers associated with instability in the personal lives of political actors. Later, on hearing the news from Nagi Island, it became apparent to me how easily I could generate stability in at least one respect by accelerating the marriage preparations. This would fulfil both my own needs as sudden clan head and my responsibility for Keiko's welfare, all while drawing on no more resources than had already been earmarked for the purpose.

"Then Mori visited me two days ago and a number of things became clear. Naturally, I was overjoyed to welcome her as a wedding guest, and keen to accept her request that we keep her attendance a surprise so as not to risk distracting Keiko while she was engaged in urgent preparations. Needless to say, there was also no need to alter the wedding date. May I please return to my guard duty?"
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Is this where I say "told ya' so"? I feel like this is where I say "told ya' so".



huhYeahGoodPoint said:
I believe @Lailoken is owed a "you did, in fact, call it"

We just needed to look over our shoulder for Ami
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Somebody can actually hear me! Please, feed Iggy! He likes bananas!



TalonofAnathrax said:
Damn, Keiko is amazingly fragile these days. Here's hoping that things work out for her.
And the thread's plans all turned out to be shit, who knew :D

At least everyone who called Ami's attendance were proved right!
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Yes. "Everyone".



Raichu1972 said:
So, for the foreseeable future (and possibly permanently) we need to plan around our finances and future prospects without the Pangolins in the equation.
Goketsu just got clearance to sell seals to the Tower; with Hazou able to make seals by the truckload he could sell to the Tower to keep us afloat for now. Once Kagome gets some students Hazou should be able to spend less time doing so as they take up the slack on that front. This should at the very least get us through for the near future.

As for the Seventh Path, we will have an in there once again through the Toad scroll, but it will likely require us to owe a debt to Asuma to teach us how to use it properly (since I highly doubt Keiko will teach us anything about it). I'm not going to make any suggestions on this front because everything seems to backfire anyways when people better at this than me try.

I also think we should just make our rounds to associates in the clans and offer our condolences before leaving the whole hat thing be; we have people far more socially competent on the case for that right now and I don't trust Hazou to not fuck everything up if he tries to do something.
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We could simply ask the pangolins to teach the summoning stunt. They probably know it better than anybody on the human path.

We're also due to return to Mountain in time for it to be leveraged during the Hokage vote.



Roomba said:
On a separate note, the lesson to learn here is this: Practical solutions aren't enough. Communication and a shared emotional context can ultimately matter a lot more. People will often care more about what they can trust you to do, rather than what you're actually doing.

Our failure with Keiko wasn't that we didn't engage with the problem. We actually put a lot of thought and energy into making the clan less dependent on Pangolin blood money, and had further plans in the pipeline. What we failed to do, is communicate all of this to her, and convince her that we cared, not just as a matter of strategy, but actually gave a shit about the genocide. And we absolutely did, given the amount of heated arguments we've had about it, we just didn't think it was important to convince her of this, or support her in her distress. It is an ongoing failure of ours, to only care about people once they start imploding and causing problems.

On that note, Mari is a time-bomb and we should absolutely touch base with her asap. Make some effort at mending fences with Keiko, and in general rally the clan together. Everyone must be feeling rather down after all this.
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Oh, she believes that Hazou cares. The problem is that she's less concerned with genocide than with not personally being a part of it. The fact that Noburi can now take over to prevent that from harming the clan is probably the critical factor.

If we wanted to reason with her, I'd probably suggest something along the lines of:

"If we just stop selling seals they'll just go back to killing each other with ninjutsu in chronic endemic warfare. Pandaas will continue to die every day. A major shift requires a major new factor, and a major shift in war will almost inevitably require a major new weapon of war. If we can replace the weapons they are using with weapons they won't, that's an improvement.

You argued that the development of clans was the most important event in human history because it facilitated an enduring shared community of accumulating knowledge and capital which ultimately lead to the lost ages of grinding death being replaced by the Warring Clans period being replaced by the relatively peaceful village system. That occurred because of bloodlines. Weapons."​



Evenstar said:
Mari just launched an all-out social attack against Keiko, no doubt operating on Hazou's claim of "my responsibility."

She of course was acting out of "the best interests of the clan", but that was goddamn out of line. Keiko is clan.

So.

I'm tempted to say "discipline Mari", but frankly I feel like that might be what she wants. She's still in "I can't help being a huge bitch" mode, because she's terrified of taking personal responsibility for anything.

Therefore:

[X] Action Plan: Those Who Would Harm Their Teammates Are Even Lower Than That
  • Order Mari to personally apologize to Keiko, admit her fault in front of the whole clan, and make what restitution Keiko should deem necessary.
    • "My responsibility, not yours" extends only to actions Mari takes in the interests of the betterment of the clan.
    • Deliberately attempting to manipulate one of the clan is not acting in its interests.
    • What's more, Mari failed to achieve her objective - retaining the contract - and has done quite possibly irreparable harm in the process.
    • By both motive and consequence, she has acted against express orders and betrayed her own clan.
    • Therefore she will not argue or weasel regarding whatever discipline Hazou hands down.
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This seems like jumping the gun. We don't actually know that Mari wasn't being sincere. Even Keiko was only being precautious.
 
@Velorien, thanks for the very good chapter! Ninja marriage customs are hilarious.

Also, most of the update was from Keiko's pow, and Ami is in Leaf now. Should have probably seen that coming.


Anyway, I think we should take Shikamaru's advice, and try to build up relationships with ISC and all the other young clan heads. Without their support we're done. Also maybe stay far away from risky political maneuvering for a while? Mari seems to have a grip on things. Let's just ask her what we should do, and do that.

Also mend our relationship with Keiko as soon as possible. We need her.
 
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Asquil said:
@Velorien, thanks for the very good chapter! Ninja marriage customs are hilarious.
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Credit to @eaglejarl for pointing out the ridiculousness of marriage customs in general, and insisting that this be reflected in the wedding.

Asquil said:
Also, most of the update was from Keiko's pow, and Ami is in Leaf now. Should have probably seen that coming.
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Which is exactly what you'd expect from me writing what I want.

Well, in fairness, Ami arrived in Leaf a while ago. I just got to be the one to write her because I did the wedding scene. (Also @eaglejarl doesn't want to be the one to write her, the same way I don't want to be the one to write Kagome-Honoka interludes).
 
[X] Defer position as Clan Head to Noburi, go on a training montage with Kagome

Noburi is good at this talking stuff; let's have him do it instead,
Time to become swole during a time skip so we can finally make a pact with the Rift Denizens and spread Uplift, one way or another :p
 
Enjou said:
I think the idea is maybe that with Leaf weakened a sufficiently large group of civilians who want to form a clan and have a legitimate enough reason to do so might be able to pressure the existing clans due to needing to avoid internal strife. If a bunch of jonin and chunin say "we want this" and you can't afford to lose them? Well, you have little choice but to capitulate, especially with precedent already set
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"Challenge the clans, directly under the suggestion of a foreign ninja in a moment of turmoil" is the kind of shit that ends in the Uchiha massacre and the ANBU at your door.
Because "Sannin creates a Clan" is quite different from "Bunch of clanless create a clan under the sway of a Mist Jonin".
Especially just before the vote for the Hat,.
It's ridiculous impressive if the Shimura are an actual clan instead of a informal one.
It just goes to show how ridiculous Ami is now that we don't have Jiraiya to counter her.
 
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