Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Dagan's Comfort didn't serve breakfast per se, but the innkeeper insisted that he had far too much fresh fruit on his hands, and it would only go off if his guests didn't help him eat it. Hazō wasn't sure why, but he got a sense that the innkeeper would also have too much fresh fruit on his hands tomorrow, and the day after. Apparently, the rat-faced man had not led them astray when it came to getting food for free.

Noburi, having come in late last night (and with nothing to report beyond "I rock; talk tomorrow") was gazing blearily at a crescent-moon-like yellow fruit(?) which was clearly meant to be eaten in some unintuitive way. Akane had asked for instructions concerning hers, and was now methodically, and very quietly, sawing it in half with a small knife. Hazō was…


…plotting how to exact brutal revenge on Noburi (an experience so familiar, he'd almost missed it over the last few months), or at least plotting to plot brutal revenge once his tongue stopped melting into oblivion. He had, however, managed to stay upright, with eyes open, and minimal swaying. Anyone who didn't know him would just assume he was concealing a hangover.

And Haru was staring in silent bewilderment at a tough brown sphere about half the size of his head, uncertain whether to eat it immediately, cut it, break it, pull it apart, or apply some manner of solvent he had yet to be provided with. Hazō wondered if he'd been rude to one of the serving girls.

"You missed dinner," Hazō said to Noburi.

"Don' tell me you decided to go for a night-time assignation after all," he added teasingly.

Noburi shuddered. "So you know how I'm the ancestors' gift to women?"

Hazō, Akane, and Haru raised their eyebrows with such perfect coordination that they might as well have spent all night practising. (Note to self: actually do that at some point. Revenge and all.)

"You three just don't recognise true talent when you see it," Noburi said casually. "How many people here are engaged to be married, again?"

Around a third of the hands in the room went up.

"You mind your own business," Noburi snapped. "I'm trying to boast about my romantic success here."

There was a round of muttered apologies.

Noburi sighed. "I had a great evening, and had dinner with a really cute girl who wouldn't stop talking about herself—and by extension, stuff she's interested in that's currently happening in O'Uzu—and I really recommend the local venison, and if anyone turns up asking for Nanashi Tokumei, you've never heard the name before in your life."

Hazō groaned. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Noburi exclaimed. "I was just my usual charming self. I chatted with her. I said all the things a young woman wants to hear. I paid for dinner. I spent half the night trying to get her to lose my trail, because apparently the girls around here are unstoppable bloodhounds."

"You got engaged by accident again, didn't you?" Akane said with an air of resignation. "This is why you make sure you study the local customs first. What weapons was this one carrying?"

"None!" Noburi exclaimed. "And I'm like eighty percent sure I didn't say anything that bad!"

He looked around at the other guests. "You guys don't think it's possible to get engaged by accident in O'Uzu, right?"

Nobody would meet his eyes.

"Ah, hell."


Back in the relative privacy of the boys' room, after Haru gave up on his breakfast…

"It's all right," Noburi insisted, apparently to himself as much as anyone else. "It's not like they can force me to actually get married. Once this mission's over, we get out of here like the Great Spirit's turned out to be Captain Zabuza's ghost, and no civilian is going to track me all the way back home."

"The last girl did," Hazō said pointedly.

Haru, who'd managed to stay quiet so far, gave him a frustrated look. "Would anyone mind filling me in here?"

"Oh. Sorry." Hazō sighed. "On another mission to a place with its own unique culture, Noburi accidentally ended up engaged to this random girl with an axe. Her name's Yuno. You might have seen her around."

Haru nodded. "She seems nice. She invited me to spar once, but I was busy."

"Her clan decided to take advantage of it for all it was worth politically," Akane said, picking up the thread, "and nobody told her. Then, when it was time for us to leave, Noburi rejected her in the most awful way possible and broke her heart."

"I said it was a mistake," Noburi muttered. "Let it go, Akane."

"The reason she's here," Hazō said, "is that despite us moving half a continent away without telling her where we were going, or even our real names, she managed to track us down. You may or may not have heard that they're engaged again."

"After he broke her heart and abandoned her?" Haru asked in disbelief. "Why?"

"It's half politics," Noburi said, "and half complicated. Don't get me wrong, though. Nobody is being forced into anything. She came after me because she's just…" He gave a warm smile. "Special."

Hazō hadn't heard him speak in such a tone of voice often. Usually Noburi was flippant, or snarky, or flippant and snarky, or, rarely, moody and inclined to snap. It wasn't his style to be soft and gentle the way Akane was when the people around her needed it.

"She's more than one kind of special, though," Noburi said, sobering up. "She can sense when I've so much as looked at another girl. The dinner seemed like a good idea at the time, but once we're home, I'm going to have to throw myself at her feet and persuade her it was all for the mission. I'm hoping she won't force me to give her details and then come down to O'Uzu to 'settle things'…"

Haru was gazing at Noburi with increasing horror.

"All right," Hazō said after a second. "While we wait for your karma to catch up to you, did you at least get anything useful out of her?"

"Who do you think I am?" Noburi demanded. "You think I'd risk my love life for the mission and come away empty-handed? Get a load of this."

He crossed his arms proudly.

"Next week, they're holding the Earth's Bounty Festival here in Todoroki. It lasts for a week, and it's like a competition to see who can gather the most food in the Lesser Forest and bring it back to the shrine. At the end of the week, they have an enormous feast, and whoever's brought back the most gets to ask the Earth Spirit for a special boon."

Haru frowned. "The Earth's Bounty Festival is in autumn. I got an almanac."

"Apparently, it's been moved up because… because the Nagi people badly need something to celebrate," Noburi said. "But it could be a huge opportunity for us. Because everyone wants that extra edge, they tend to go a little further past the Greater Forest borders than usual, and that's a chance to figure out where to go without wasting time getting lost because nobody here knows the first thing about navigating through forests."

Akane and Haru raised their hands.

"Oh, right, Fire Country. My bad.

"Anyway," Noburi said, not sounding remorseful at all, "it also means the older and more experienced guides will be coming out of the woodwork, pun intended, and if we can grab one, that's extra intel on chakra monsters or whatever it is that's so dangerous about crossing into the Greater Forest."

"The boon," Akane said thoughtfully. "What kind of boon?"

"There was a list of recent ones in the almanac," Haru said. "If you use the boon to confess your feelings to someone, they're sure to reciprocate within the month, and if you propose to them, they're sure to accept. If your boon is children, you'll have a healthy one within the year. If your boon is getting a girlfriend, somebody at the feast is sure to ask you out. People have asked for other things, but that's the trend.

"What really caught my attention, though, was that a couple of decades ago somebody brought back the biggest amount of food in history, without a team, and made their boon seeing the Great Spirit in person. They're the only person ever to go into the Greater Forest and come back alive."

"The summoner," Hazō said.

"Sounds like," Noburi agreed. "We should ask around. See what anyone else knows about her, like, say, whether she was carrying a whopping great scroll around. For that matter, if she's still around, do we meet her? Do we try to recruit her? Do we win the boon and get her to fall in love with Hazō? Just think, you could have a Granny Karina of your very own. "

Hazō shuddered. Haru once again gave him a questioning look.

"I'll tell you later," Akane whispered, "when their masculine pride isn't around."

Hazō sighed. "If you have to. There's just one thing that bothers me about this festival, though."

"Yeah?"

"You know how we're spending our time in Leaf in brutal competition about who gets to be the most helpful? What if there's going to be a brutal competition over who gets to be the most loving?"

The room was silent for a second.

"The winner can get the person they want as a partner or spouse," Akane said slowly. "There are people out there who would kill for that."

"Right," Hazō said. "Assuming the O'Uzu people aren't the murdering type, there could be cheating, sabotage, deception, intimidation…"

"Yes, please," Noburi said keenly as Hazō trailed off. "No offence to you, mighty and glorious clan head, but you're offering us a week of being ninja rather than politicians and administrators."

"Akane?"

Akane nodded, firmly and without hesitation. "I agree with Noburi. We should do this."

"Haru?"

Haru shrugged. "Why not? Personally, I'd rather have every advantage I can get before going into the Forest of Death's big brother."

"Looks like we have a plan of action, then," Hazō said. "Let's get as much information-gathering, contact-contacting and general mission work as we can until the end of the week, then go into the Possibly Forest of Death and ace the Civilian Exam."

"It's amazing how perfectly that straddles the border between exciting and lame," Noburi observed.

"Thank you, Noburi." Hazō had been proud of that one.

"Say, Akane," he asked, "we know Noburi was off getting engaged to strangers last night, but why did you come back so late?"

"I was investigating the Oracle," Akane said simply, after a second. "There's an Inner Shrine where you can take a test, and if you pass, you get a special blessing from the Great Spirit, and if you fail, you get a curse."

"Can we just talk to the Oracle?" Hazō asked. "By definition, an oracle is someone who tells people things. It seems like the perfect place to go for secret lore and the like."

Akane shook her head. "There has to be a test. I don't know if you can ask for knowledge as your special blessing. I didn't ask, I think."

"You think?"

"It's like a dream," Akane said vaguely. "It's hard to remember. There's incense, and you see things, and I think there are questions. Questions you don't want anyone to ask. Questions you wish you couldn't answer. Facing yourself doesn't mean what people think it means.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember very well."

"You took a test?" Hazō asked anxiously. "Did you pass?"

"I passed," Akane said, the uncertainty leaving her voice. "That I know."

Why would Akane do something like that? It was only their first day. They were supposed to be scouting. It wasn't like she had been dragged to the offering box by the sleeve and forced to choose between doomed love and cabbages.

"So what did you ask for?" he asked.

Akane's expression instantly went blank. "Nothing important."

Hazō may have offended multiple Kage over the last half-year or so with his stellar social skills, but he knew a conversation closer when he heard one.

"All right. We have Jiraiya's contacts to track down, twenty years of history to plumb for clues, and a Nanashi Tokumei to throw to the wolves as he once again deserves. Let's move out."


You have received 1 + 1 = 2 XP.


Haru has duly soaked in information about your specialisations. As for himself, he feels his strength, outside combat, is his directness. He tells people what he thinks, frankly and without holding back, and then for some reason they either do whatever he wants or run away. Infiltration isn't a strength for him (nor is subtlety in general), but he's a capable scout as long as he doesn't give in to the temptation to take trouble out on the spot lest it come back to bite his team when they're not expecting it.


What do you do?

Voting closes Saturday 21st of March, 9 a.m. New York time.