Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Tua · Jun 12, 2020

Velorien said:
It probably wasn't a chakra squirrel, but if it was, then Mari only had herself to blame for delaying her reinforcements.

Oh hey, I have also had some thoughts about chakra squirrels while scribbling some stuff for future omake ideas. I wonder if yours are similar to my idea.

Strange minds think alike after all.

Velorien said:
(chakra squirrels killed swiftly and silently, so there would have been no screaming to tip him off)

...yeah, okay. Mine are lot less evil. Maybe not all too surprising in hindsight.

Velorien said:
"I have eyes," Mari said. "Two, in fact, and they work perfectly fine even if they apparently won't stay one colour.

Hah, Mari is trolling the hivemind.

"I know that you know that my eyes change color. Whatcha gonna do about it?"

Hivemind: 😦

Velorien said:
"So if you decide that you're not going to have a romantic relationship with Akane because of this, then you're deciding you'll never have a romantic relationship with anyone unless it's Ino or Hinata.

@Dictator4Hire has entered the chat.

Velorien said:
I went into my marriage with Jiraiya with enough self-esteem issues to make Akane look like an enlightened sage. I don't regret it."

She paused.

"Not for a moment.

Losing Jiraiya remains one of the major tragedies in this quest.

Velorien said:
"Gōketsu Mari Teaching Number Sixty-One," Mari said immediately.

There is a list?!

Wait, of course there is a list.

--

Some good insights into our little boy.

Oneiros · Jun 12, 2020

[X] Action plan: Summoning Scroll Squad

Run everything by the clan. Make sure Mari and Noburi are onboard

Meet with Asuma: Hazou would like to discuss 2 clan secrets with Asuma
- The seal arrays at Nagi Island are a gold mine
  - there is a member of team uplift that has an ability that would allow leaf to obtain a copy of those arrays
  - If Asuma can help get us close enough we can get him a copy of the arrays
- The second one involves Noburi and Summoning
  - After making the deal with Yasuji Hazou has been thinking of ways to exploit excess chakra
  - With Noburi's ability to transfer chakra and a chakra farm he can refill any summoner that has an embassy with the toads or vice versa
  - This would let every summoner have full access to every summon at any time without lowering there Chakra reserves
  - We saw how effective this strategy was during the chunnin exam
    - Team Goketsu ran a train on everyone
    - Now Imagine multiple summoners doing that
    - With even more and stronger summons
  - Of course it would be a trick that would be available to the Hokage
    - But it would be easier for members of Goketsu
    - In light of that we would like to petition for the porcupine scroll to be assigned to Goketsu

eaglejarl · Jun 12, 2020

Inferno Vulpix said:
I think a good way to very roughly approximate EJ's preferences is to look at the feeling of 'Jiraiya'. Cool punching fights are very Jiraiya, but so are bombastic political moves or daring plots and schemes.

EJ probably wouldn't like it if we wanted to consult with Kagome about the idea of consulting with the clan about the idea of consulting with Asuma about it, since spinning our wheels on recursive precautions is very not Jiraiya, but a swift one-two of pitching a cool scheme to the clan and then pitching it to Asuma would be fairly Jiraiya, I think.

All the this. Although the part to the clan could probably be "Check this with the clan and don't do it if they say not".

Immortal Lurker · Jun 12, 2020

[X] Action plan: Summoning Scroll Squad

Oneiros said:
there is a member of team uplift that has an ability that would allow leaf to obtain a copy of those arrays

Asuma might be able to piece together that its Hazou who can do this. I'm fine with that, but it should be known.

Also, I'm not sure how valuable our copies will be. Yes, we can make a copy whenever we feel the need to, but we won't be able to infuse it. At best, this will act as a research aid for Konoha's other seal research teams.

Mostly, I'm voting for this because it gets us a scroll, and it takes steps towards chakra beast extermination. I would like to make a test run on our own first, to make sure we actually have the good before selling it, but I will take what I can get.

ContextBot · Jun 12, 2020

Inferno Vulpix said:
The Nagi Island site isn't owned by Mist, and it pertains to Leaf just as much as it pertains to Mist, so as much as they have personnel there they don't have a strong legal claim on it. This leaves vulnerabilities in their defenses.

Nagato seems to think it belongs to Mist:

Velorien said:
"You are injured and low on chakra," Pain replied with the uninvolved air of one checking off boxes. "Factoring in Lady Senju's wounds, I am presently the strongest shinobi alive. I could abort the ritual right now and destroy this island. I could shut down this ritual safely, destroy you all before you could confirm whether it was safe to attack me, and try to restart the ritual somewhere else. Or after destroying you, I could kill the jinchūriki since they are no longer any use to me, and use my powers to escape, leaving six Tailed Beasts to rampage across the Water Country."

Inferno Vulpix said:
This might work because it's likely the guards don't know about Kurosawa seal downloading, which means they might not be wary about Hazou just looking at the array.

Unless of course one of those guards is a Kurosawa.

Can't we just Asuma to visit the place out of pure curiosity, perhaps once Kagome is done with his decrytion job?

Lord Marshal · Jun 12, 2020

Oneiros said:
[X] Action plan: Summoning Scroll Squad

Run everything by the clan. Make sure Mari and Noburi are onboard

Meet with Asuma: Hazou would like to discuss 2 clan secrets with Asuma

The seal arrays at Nagi Island are a gold mine

there is a member of team uplift that has an ability that would allow leaf to obtain a copy of those arrays

If Asuma can help get us close enough we can get him a copy of the arrays

The second one involves Noburi and Summoning

With Noburi's ability to transfer chakra and a chakra farm he can refill any summoner that has an embassy with the toads or vice versa

This would let every summoner have full access to every summon at any time without lowering there Chakra reserves

We saw how effective this strategy was during the chunnin exam

Team Goketsu ran a train on everyone

Now Imagine multiple summoners doing that

With even more and stronger summons

Of course it would be a trick that would be available to the Hokage

But it would be easier for members of Goketsu

In light of that we would like to petition for the porcupine scroll to be assigned to Goketsu

This is committing an extremely blatant power grab in front of an Hokage that almost killed us for a good reason. Also, why are we revealing the full 7th Path Summon S-rank trick instead of just selling it piece by piece an extracting maximum value from every "discovery"?
I'm actually curious about your model of the situation, what do you think will happen and why?

faflec · Jun 12, 2020

Lord Marshal said:
This is committing an extremely blatant power grab in front of an Hokage that almost killed us for a good reason. Also, why are we revealing the full 7th Path Summon S-rank trick instead of just selling it piece by piece an extracting maximum value from every "discovery"?
I'm actually curious about your model of the situation, what do you think will happen and why?

Somewhat related: We should make sure Noburi won't have any issues with actually bringing the chakra water over to the Seventh Path. I seem to recall there was a discussion on that, way back when.

I think it'll be fine, personally, but eh. Better safe than sorry.

Oneiros · Jun 12, 2020

Immortal Lurker said:
[X] Action plan: Summoning Scroll Squad
Asuma might be able to piece together that its Hazou who can do this. I'm fine with that, but it should be known.

Yeah we just want some plausible denability

Lord Marshal said:
I'm actually curious about your model of the situation, what do you think will happen and why?

My model is that we are revealing an 2 incredibly valuable secrets to the Hokage. Promising that we will use them to benefit leaf. We are making a non-threatening argument about why we are best suited to exploit using the scroll. At worse I think Asuma appreciates the fact we are putting leaf first

Lord Marshal · Jun 12, 2020

Oneiros said:
My model is that we are revealing an 2 incredibly valuable secrets to the Hokage. Promising that we will use them to benefit leaf. We are making a non-threatening argument about why we are best suited to exploit using the scroll. At worse I think Asuma appreciates the fact we are putting leaf first

How we are putting Leaf first if the first thing we try after telling him this capability is "This is why you should give us the Scroll?". Asuma first question is "Why he didn't say anything before?" with the answer being "He had nothing to obtain until now".

RandomOTP · Jun 12, 2020

Velorien said:
In any case, if an elite jōnin who'd long since proved her wilderness survival skills really wanted to be left alone, there wouldn't be any tracks for him to follow. Yes, he'd keep telling himself that.

Velorien said:
Mari instantly sprang into action. Pushing off the branch sideways, she swivelled around so that she was stretched out perpendicular to it, only a touch of chakra adhesion from the balls of her feet keeping her from plummeting towards the distant ground. She reached out, caught the package just before it disappeared, then let gravity swing her down and forward, letting go of the chakra adhesion right before it would have left her standing vertically off the bottom of the branch. As the momentum carried her back towards the trunk, she grabbed the nearest branch with her free hand, and swung herself all the way around that, landing at her original position in a backwards somersault.

Just a daily reminder that Mari is casually terrifying and not just a social spec jonin. Yeah, Hazou, she let you follow her.

Velorien said:
The Revenge on Noburi Counter, incrementing gradually over the last few months as these things did, had reached a critical point. His brother's suffering would be legendary.

Soak his underwear in mashed up peppers.

Velorien said:
"I have eyes," Mari said. "Two, in fact, and they work perfectly fine even if they apparently won't stay one colour.

"How do I even coordinate around that?" she added. "I'm going to need a wardrobe the size of an Akimichi pantry.

Velorien said:
"Nah," Mari said. "Just taking the opportunity to grouse. You go ahead."

Mari's mental health continues to flourish and I love it ^.^

Velorien said:
"My little Hazō's all grown up…" Mari murmured. "Almost."

This made my heart smile.

Velorien said:
"Relatively few," Mari said, "as that would involve loving people.

I don't think any of us believe that anymore. That might have been who Mari was, but that's not who she is.

Velorien said:
"Actually," she reflected, "that's still an option. Hazō, conquer and rule the Elemental Nations for me. I'll start working on the harem."

Plot Twist: Mari brings back Jiraiya using her harem of powerful people, no Hazou needed.

Velorien said:
"This is unacceptable," Hazō growled. "Thanks for all the advice, Mari. You're absolutely right. Akane and I need to have words."

@Velorien, this is easily one of my favorite chapters thus far!

Inferno Vulpix said:
For this update, there's been some talk on Discord about going to Nagi Island to download the seals there, so we can replicate them in Leaf for future study. After the initial round of discussions this seems like a surprisingly reasonable task:

We could use the citrus trade as an excuse. Or we could say that Noburi fell in love with that one cashier girl and we're just doing our duty as an older brother to help him out --revenge and an excuse!

Tua said:
Losing Jiraiya remains one of the major tragedies in this quest.

Agreed.

EDIT: Brain's beating my skull like a drum, may not be very active for a few hours. Will be likely to vote for a plan that does action-y things (like chakra beast hunting with Yuno, mine spelunking, etc) while doing minor prep work for Vel's next chapter that'll, presumably, have a conversation with Akane. Side note, @Velorien, your excellent writing may have just swayed me to the side of the Akane-shippers.

Oneiros · Jun 12, 2020

Lord Marshal said:
How we are putting Leaf first if the first thing we try after telling him this capability is "This is why you should give us the Scroll?". Asuma first question is "Why he didn't say anything before?" with the answer being "He had nothing to obtain until now".

Ohhh good catch! I meant to put in a line about how we thought of it after the deal with Yasuji since we would be thinking of things to do with excess chakra. I'll edit that in now

faflec · Jun 12, 2020

Didn't Jiraiya tell us to keep the Wakahisa trick in reserve, or something along those lines?

Lord Marshal · Jun 12, 2020

Oneiros said:
Ohhh good catch! I meant to put in a line about how we thought of it after the deal with Yasuji since we would be thinking of things to do with excess chakra. I'll edit that in now

I don't understand how you believe Asuma to be so foolish as to not understand what we are doing when he showed us he constantly understood what we were doing every time, or that a single line would be enough to fool him. On top of that the plan still remains inefficient, we could sell Noburi+Koi, then Noburi+7th Path, then Noburi+Chakra Farm(If it works)+7th Path and bring Leaf three innovation and obtain maximum value for everything with Mari help. Or just sell them the first two and keep the Summoning Army for ourselves.

apooooop · Jun 12, 2020

One other thing that needs to be addressed:

Nobs is getting a bit big for his britches. We need to take him down a few pegs in the grand prank war. This is clearly a Priority Zero initiative.

[-] Action plan: Summoning Scroll Squad

Might have some thoughts on how to improve the negotiations for porc scroll, might not, ideas are rolling in my head. Will post if things feel useful.

EDIT: preferring no to the porc scroll right now

Paperclipped · Jun 12, 2020

faflec said:
Didn't Jiraiya tell us to keep the Wakahisa trick in reserve, or something along those lines?

eaglejarl said:
"Well, we're already planning to bring a bunch of Wakahisa along with us, so in this particular case it's not essential and, frankly, I'd rather keep this one back as one of those ace-in-the-holes that I don't tell the other Kage about. Still, it would be a pretty cool trick going forward. Noburi, I don't need it for this battle, but if you would be willing to keep me supplied while I'm out and about from now on, that would be crazy awesome."

Possibly this isn't a J-tier trick, but it's something he wanted to keep under wraps anyway because it's valuable and it wasn't immediately needed at BotG.

redzonejoe · Jun 12, 2020

Oneiros said:
Of course it would be a trick that would be available to the Hokage

But it would be easier for members of Goketsu

In light of that we would like to petition for the porcupine scroll to be assigned to Goketsu

Nope. Not happening. There is approximately a 'no way' chance of this being approved. Request denied.

I'll be voting for any plan which doesn't include this, thanks.

Inferno Vulpix · Jun 12, 2020

I don't think it's wise to approach the Porcupine Scroll as anything other than an edge-case option. I do not want to overestimate our play and look greedy in front of Asuma so soon after losing almost all of our credibility with him. Moreover, it would likely look bad for Asuma to assign the Porcupine Scroll - submitted by the Goketsu to the contest, thus formally giving up any claim to it and stating that we understand we are giving it up in exchange for contest contribution - to the same people who submitted it.

Even if we approached the topic with the utmost care, I don't see more than a 10% chance of it working out. As-is, I can only see it spell disaster of the 'Hazou you absolute moron' variety.

faflec · Jun 12, 2020

[X] Action Plan: Blowing Up Steam

Go punch some nearby chakra monsters. See if there's a mission doing that if the location is close to Konoha, otherwise go to the Forest of Death to do it.
Obviously tell the clan we're doing this, and that we'll back off if things get dangerous. Otherwise, go ahead and punch away our stress.
Maybe we can invite Lee and make a competition out of it? Surely chakra monster meat can be worth some food for the Church of Youth to use?

Sentient Tree · Jun 12, 2020

Inferno Vulpix said:
I don't think it's wise to approach the Porcupine Scroll as anything other than an edge-case option. I do not want to overestimate our play and look greedy in front of Asuma so soon after losing almost all of our credibility with him. Moreover, it would likely look bad for Asuma to assign the Porcupine Scroll - submitted by the Goketsu to the contest, thus formally giving up any claim to it and stating that we understand we are giving it up in exchange for contest contribution - to the same people who submitted it.

Even if we approached the topic with the utmost care, I don't see more than a 10% chance of it working out. As-is, I can only see it spell disaster of the 'Hazou you absolute moron' variety.

I was under the impression that the scroll didn't count for the contest since we were submitting it as a "please don't kill me, look how useful I am" kind of thing?

Inferno Vulpix · Jun 12, 2020

Sentient Tree said:
I was under the impression that the scroll didn't count for the contest since we were submitting it as a "please don't kill me, look how useful I am" kind of thing?

We submitted it to the contest to signal that we're loyal helpful Leaf-nin before talking about the treason. I don't see why it wouldn't count as a regular contest submission.

RandomOTP · Jun 12, 2020

faflec said:
[X] Action Plan: Blowing Up Steam

Go punch some nearby chakra monsters. See if there's a mission doing that if the location is close to Konoha, otherwise go to the Forest of Death to do it.

Obviously tell the clan we're doing this, and that we'll back off if things get dangerous. Otherwise, go ahead and punch away our stress.

Maybe we can invite Lee and make a competition out of it? Surely chakra monster meat can be worth some food for the Church of Youth to use?

Remember the aqueduct we built? Or were at least clearing land for? We could do that again and get some progress done. Snag Noburi and Yuno, tease Noburi in a good-natured way, then plot with Yuno behind Noburi's back about revenge. Maybe tell Yuno about some embarrassing Noburi-stories? We could experiment with inventive ways to use some of our lesser-utilized jutsu?

Kiba · Jun 12, 2020

faflec said:
[X] Action Plan: Blowing Up Steam

Go punch some nearby chakra monsters. See if there's a mission doing that if the location is close to Konoha, otherwise go to the Forest of Death to do it.

Obviously tell the clan we're doing this, and that we'll back off if things get dangerous. Otherwise, go ahead and punch away our stress.

Maybe we can invite Lee and make a competition out of it? Surely chakra monster meat can be worth some food for the Church of Youth to use?

We could work on punching for our aqueduct project.

@eaglejarl How close are we to the phase in which we start punching and building an aqueduct?

[] Action Plan: Blowing Up Steam

RandomOTP said:
Remember the aqueduct we built? Or were at least clearing land for? We could do that again and get some progress done. Snag Noburi and Yuno, tease Noburi in a good-natured way, then plot with Yuno behind Noburi's back about revenge. Maybe tell Yuno about some embarrassing Noburi-stories? We could experiment with inventive ways to use some of our lesser-utilized jutsu?

I don't remember clearing anything for our aqueduct. The civilians on the project were working on proof of concepts and land survey.

redzonejoe · Jun 12, 2020

faflec said:
[X] Action Plan: Blowing Up Steam

This sounds entirely like a wasted update. "Hey EJ, here's something to punch so we can get back to Velorian/Akane update"

This deserves a background paragraph on the next update, not to be the next update.

The only thing I like about this is that it's an alternative to the other plan I hate more.

roobee · Jun 12, 2020

@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail
I seem to recall some mention that if a plan wasn't finished voting would be closed until it finished (and of that overruling EJ's default voting is always open). Did that happen? Is it still happening?

Paperclipped · Jun 12, 2020

[X] Action Plan: Building Momentum
Word Count: 148

Talk with Asuma (after clearing with clan)
1. A member of Clan Gouketsu has a method to perfectly store a given seal. It would be useful to go to Nagi Island and copy Akatsuki's sealing array.
2. This is a secret that Jiraiya told us to keep under wraps, but it's too valuable to Leaf not to explain. If a summoner on a mission sets up an embassy with the Toads, it's possible they can refuel their chakra with Noburi's water.
Violence Therapy
1. Grab Noburi, Yuno, Lee, and anyone else who wants to come along and murder some chakra beasts.
2. Murder some chakra beasts to clear space for the planned aqueduct.
Closing Ceremony
1. By the end of the contest, submit:
  1. All of Jiraiya's decoded seal notes, Elemental chakra nature training.
  2. Any skyslider progress.
  3. <???>
2. If we win, our preference over prizes is (check with clan):
  1. Dog Scroll
  2. Land
  3. Stipend
  4. Jutsu
  5. Clan-expansion

Eager to change the preference over prizes, this is just my first pass. Also fine with replacing the Violence Therapy scene with something else, I'm not terribly attached to it. Would like it if people suggested more things we could give to the contest.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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