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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Inferno Vulpix said:
We should ask her how she invented it, because she hasn't called herself a Technique Hacker and don't you need to be one to invent jutsu? Hopefully that lead-in will give us a little more insight on what makes it different from normal techniques.
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Maybe all her memories of being a technique hacker were happy ones, and she erased them all so she doesn't even remember being one? :p
 
Velorien said:
January 5, 1069 AS.

It was another miserable winter day for the eternally miserable Eiichi. The measly handful of ryō in his pouch would barely suffice for a few days' worth of vegetables, and he could hardly remember what meat tasted like. This wasn't how his life had been meant to go. He'd been part of the cycle. Money went from the land to the peasants, from the peasants to his pockets, from his pockets to the daimyo, and from the daimyo to the ninja. You were meant to keep some back at each step, or the economy stopped working. His was an essential step in the regulatory process, at least until the daimyo found out and scheduled him for the headsman's block. It had taken the daimyo's own wife to intercede on his behalf, and the daimyo would invent all-new forms of execution just for Eiichi if he ever found out why.

Eiichi stopped dead. That rich red hair, accented by occasional snowflakes. That misleadingly small stature and those brown eyes. It was her. Lady Gōketsu. The Fifth Hokage's wife. Mother to the Nara Keiko. Eiichi quietly shuffled out of her way, to the edge of the street.

Which was how he nearly bumped into the other ninja, a tall, raven-haired beauty strolling around the corner with a skip in her step. Eiichi leapt out of the way before he could offend her, then stood very still up against the wall in the hope that she would shrug and walk away. She didn't.

"Mari-sensei!" the tall ninja exclaimed. "I've been…"

She cut off.

"Understood," she said almost too quietly for Eiichi to hear. "I'll stay out of your way."

She made to turn away.

"Ami," Lady Gōketsu said neutrally.

Ami turned back. "Well, why didn't you just say so?"

"It was implied."

The two stood there for two seconds, maybe three, staring at each other silently.

"Oh. Gotcha," Ami said.

Lady Gōketsu nodded. "Pretty much. You heard of a drink called lupchanzen piss?"

Eiichi had never heard of lupchanzen. From context, it was probably an animal, though the name sounded like it should be a plant. Either way, it sounded unnatural, and the kind of thing only ninja would meddle with.

"Mari-sensei," Ami said reproachfully, "I've been here for days."

"So you have," Lady Gōketsu said. "My bad."

She walked past Ami, linking arms. "Come on, we've got a lot to talk about."

The two ninja set off down the road. For an instant, Ami glanced back at Eiichi and gave a friendly smile. Eiichi's days at court allowed him to flawlessly identify it as "eavesdropping is bad, and I know what you look like".

He bowed deeply, and then ran away.


-o-

​
Short update this week due to general brain failure. You may want to take this opportunity to think in more detail about what/how you want from Ami, since at this rate I'll almost certainly be writing her next Thursday.

Voting remains open as usual until Saturday 8th of June, 9 a.m. New York Time.​
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Well, we already knew that Mari was one of the fires we need to address, so, as i said, we talk to Mari ASAP.
For now:

[x] Continue Previous Plan

Because we need to read that debriefing and Mari needs an entire plan just for her, Ami too.

On that...
@Velorien ,@eaglejarl ,@OliWhail what would happen if we voted for Hazou to "Cry"? Would he try to fake crying? Would he let his emotions free and do so, or it would depends on our intent? Assuming of course, there is an actual underlying reason for him to do so.
More simply, can we engineer a real emotional episode in Hazou mind at will, assuming there are sensible underlying causes?
 
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Lord Marshal said:
Well, we already knew that Mari was one of the fires we need to address, so, as i said, we talk to Mari ASAP.
For now:

[x] Continue Previous Plan

Because we need to read that debriefing and Mari needs an entire plan just for her, Ami too.

On that...
@Velorien ,@eaglejarl ,@OliWhail what would happen if we voted for Hazou to "Cry"? Would he try to fake crying? Would he let his emotions free and do so, or it would depends on our intent? Assuming of course, there is an actual underlying reason for him to do so.
More simply, can we engineer a real emotional episode in Hazou mind at will, assuming there are sensible underlying causes?
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Thinking back to when we had Hazuo get mad at Keiko for her self hate bs we can give him a train og thought to follow in order to arrive to a certain emotion. My guess is the effectiveness of this is based on both how much it makes sense and how in character it is.
 
Lord Marshal said:
@Velorien ,@eaglejarl ,@OliWhail what would happen if we voted for Hazou to "Cry"? Would he try to fake crying? Would he let his emotions free and do so, or it would depends on our intent? Assuming of course, there is an actual underlying reason for him to do so. More simply, can we engineer a real emotional episode in Hazou mind at will, assuming there are sensible underlying causes?
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No. You gave up the ability to give Hazō actual emotional responses when you voted to have Hazō stop being an avatar of your will and become a character with agency.

If you want Hazō to cry, the best you can do is instruct him to think about sad things for one purpose or another, e.g. reflect on his breakup with Akane so he can figure out where he went wrong. However, you have no influence over whether Hazō will cry, or just lie in bed feeling miserable a while, or go make lists as a coping mechanism, or sigh and get on with his day.
 
Tweaked the Ami section of my plan, as I now have significant doubts that we'd need to burn a favour on enlisting her help.
Noumero said:
  • Update Mari on Ami.
    • How much can we trust her?
    • Should you sell her valuable information for favours?
    • Should you spend a favour to:
      • Enlist help with the elections. "Maximize our personal influence on Leaf politics"?
        • Otherwise, she may cause us enormous trouble. Or does Mari have her handled?
      • "Maximize my social competence."
      • "Get me IN social training."
      • <add more>
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More favour ideas would be appreciated.

Also, should we discuss the possibility of selling Ami all the Kurosawa secrets? That would probably give her even more leverage over Ren.
 
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Noumero said:
Tweaked the Ami section of my plan, as I now have significant doubts that we'd need to burn a favour on enlisting her help.

More favour ideas would be appreciated.

Also, should we discuss the possibility of selling Ami all the Kurosawa secrets? That would probably give her even more leverage over Ren.
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Should we burn our favor now? Honest question, I thought we were gonna hold it for maximum value.

And no, we shouldn't sell Kurosawa secrets to Ami. It'd give her leverage over Ren, but also over us, for having betrayed our (technical) clan.
 
Noumero said:
Also, should we discuss the possibility of selling Ami all the Kurosawa secrets? That would probably give her even more leverage over Ren.
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At first I wanted to say that would also give her a ton of a leverage over Hazou because clan secrets are Serious Business1​​ but then I realized that Hazou doesn't really know much about the Kurosawa secrets.

But the things he knows are probably enough to get Hana back in Mist into trouble if this got out. How much do we really want to trust Ami?

1​So much so that even Hana who arguably loves Hazou quite a bit never actually taught him that many Kurosawa secrets like social stuff2​. Likely because as much as her life sucked, the clan could have made it so much worse if they wanted.

2​To preempt the obvious argument: Not even the easy social tricks an Academy student/Genin could have learned. Not talking about Chuunin/Jounin level stuff that we so badly want to learn right now.
 
Noumero said:
Also, should we discuss the possibility of selling Ami all the Kurosawa secrets? That would probably give her even more leverage over Ren.
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Selling all of them is a bit risky. Lets do it in a non-obvious way.

If we just so happened to give her a pile of 100 explosives as "payment" for her time, and she --being an extremely insightful and observant individual with an OP analytical bloodline-- just so happens to notice that every explosive is not just virtually identical, but exactly the same.... well who would've guessed that such a thing would've happened? Oops ;)
 
Solve the pangolins.
Help the water fire alliance.
Get us another summon scroll.
Find a money stream.

Help Mari recover psychologically.

Teach us how to help Mari, and Naruto.

Ask for advice.
 
MMKII said:
Selling all of them is a bit risky. Lets do it in a non-obvious way.

If we just so happened to give her a pile of 100 explosives as "payment" for her time, and she --being an extremely insightful and observant individual with an OP analytical bloodline-- just so happens to notice that every explosive is not just virtually identical, but exactly the same.... well who would've guessed that such a thing would've happened? Oops ;)
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That's not a great way to do it. Seals have to be identical.
 
faflec said:
Should we burn our favor now? Honest question, I thought we were gonna hold it for maximum value.
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Depends on if we have any good ideas. If no, I'm willing to instead just let her fight Grue by our side argue with her on some inane topic.
And no, we shouldn't sell Kurosawa secrets to Ami. It'd give her leverage over Ren, but also over us, for having betrayed our (technical) clan.
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Tua said:
But the things he knows are probably enough to get Hana back in Mist into trouble if this got out. How much do we really want to trust Ami?
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Well, obviously one of the conditions would be that she can't use the information in a way that could be tracked back to us. She can probably lead Ren to believe she got it from another source.
How much do we really want to trust Ami?
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Good question! Let's ask Mari.
Immortal Lurker said:
Solve the pangolins.
Help the water fire alliance.
Get us another summon scroll.
Find a money stream.
Help Mari recover psychologically.
Teach us how to help Mari, and Naruto.
Ask for advice.
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  • Good idea. Edit: Wait, no. She'll do it for free: it's Keiko's problem.
  • She's probably already working on this. If not, it's beyond the scope of the favour.
  • Hmm. Maybe.
  • We can do it ourselves, no?
  • I really doubt that Ami is any better of a therapist than Mari. I mean, look at Keiko.
  • See above.
  • On what?
 
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Cariyaga said:
That's not a great way to do it. Seals have to be identical.
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I dunno if I personally believe that identical means literally identical. There is surely some small amount of tolerance there.

Either way, we can just draw the storage seals--lets use those instead-- in front of her to signal this. She'll pick up on the movement being exactly the same the second or third time.
 
I kinda don't think we can afford to use Ami's favor on anything beyond our current political situation, mainly because of OPSEC issues. Recall that very few people know about the Pangolin issue, or our money problem, or...well, a lot of stuff. Ami can infer that we're gonna be gunning for the Hat in some way, or that we're relatively inexperienced with political issues...but not that we're close to broke or whatever.
 
faflec said:
Should we burn our favor now? Honest question, I thought we were gonna hold it for maximum value.
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Well, first off the earlier we use the favour the longer we have to make use of it. If we wait five years to cash it in then we lose out of all the benefits we could have extracted from the outcome within those five years.

There's a cognitive trap RPG players are well familiar with, where rare unique powerful items are kept safely in their inventory and never used, because they might one day need them later, and then they reach the end of the game and realize they still haven't used any of them. If we disregard good opportunities to cash in Ami's favour because we're looking for the perfect favour, we'll end up with no benefits at all for quite a long time, and possibly forever.

The best thing to use a favour like this for is something that we can't get any other way. Ami is in charge of the AMI, recently ascendant, and the Mizukage's power is weak right now with Utakata out of commission (and plausibly being subverted to the AMI as well). It's not that big of a stretch to say that Ami is more powerful than Ren right now. In a situation like this, the thing Ami can get for us that we can't get anywhere else is likely to derive from her influence over Mist or her power over Ren.

Of this set of things, there's one that roughly matches the favour magnitude in my eyes and is intensely relevant to our new lives: the Kurosawa social techniques. Being social techniques they will be very helpful to our future in Konoha's politics and endeavors persuading people to our causes. Being clan secrets we're unlikely to get Ren's permission to learn them on our own, but with Ren under Ami's thumb for now it's quite plausible that Ami could twist Ren's arm to allow it with certain stipulations.

Perhaps there's a better favour out there - I was amenable to asking Ami to assist us in the Hat struggle, but that doesn't seem to be necessary now - but as I said earlier waiting around for the perfect favour to reveal itself is a losing move. With the information that we have now, and that we expect to get in the near future, Iron Nerve Socials are the best thing I can think of to ask for.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Well, first off the earlier we use the favour the longer we have to make use of it. If we wait five years to cash it in then we lose out of all the benefits we could have extracted from the outcome within those five years.

There's a cognitive trap RPG players are well familiar with, where rare unique powerful items are kept safely in their inventory and never used, because they might one day need them later, and then they reach the end of the game and realize they still haven't used any of them. If we disregard good opportunities to cash in Ami's favour because we're looking for the perfect favour, we'll end up with no benefits at all for quite a long time, and possibly forever.

The best thing to use a favour like this for is something that we can't get any other way. Ami is in charge of the AMI, recently ascendant, and the Mizukage's power is weak right now with Utakata out of commission (and plausibly being subverted to the AMI as well). It's not that big of a stretch to say that Ami is more powerful than Ren right now. In a situation like this, the thing Ami can get for us that we can't get anywhere else is likely to derive from her influence over Mist or her power over Ren.

Of this set of things, there's one that roughly matches the favour magnitude in my eyes and is intensely relevant to our new lives: the Kurosawa social techniques. Being social techniques they will be very helpful to our future in Konoha's politics and endeavors persuading people to our causes. Being clan secrets we're unlikely to get Ren's permission to learn them on our own, but with Ren under Ami's thumb for now it's quite plausible that Ami could twist Ren's arm to allow it with certain stipulations.

Perhaps there's a better favour out there - I was amenable to asking Ami to assist us in the Hat struggle, but that doesn't seem to be necessary now - but as I said earlier waiting around for the perfect favour to reveal itself is a losing move. With the information that we have now, and that we expect to get in the near future, Iron Nerve Socials are the best thing I can think of to ask for.
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OK, you see...I agree with all that. Up to a point. It's true that we shouldn't hold our favor for too long lest we waste its value, but at the same time, I don't see Ami's position as that much stronger than Ren's. She's still doing this tug-of-war with her, and getting IN socials from her RN might hurt her plot to be Ren's puppetmaster. I think if we want to maximize expected value we wait at most a year or two so that Ami can consolidate power, and then we go burn our favor.

And for that matter, I don't see IN socials as the favor we should use this on. Ignoring the logistical difficulties, I don't believe it'll get us a Stunt that's so much stronger than what Mari could get us to be worth the favor. I'm also concerned that Ren will just go "IN socials? What's that?", though that's just me.
 
Do we know how many months IC it's been since Jiraiya bought and began making payments on the estate? What was the size of his down payment?
 
I'd prefer to cash in the favour on any of the following:
  • "Maximise my personal agency."
  • "Maximise my personal social competence."
  • IN socials.
  • "Teach me that 'overmind' thing you do."
  • "Become my mentor."
  • "Do whatever you believe would be most useful to me up to the favour's value."
 
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