Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

"I play The Fallen Cherub Screams," Hazō said, placing down the card with a weight and finality fit to punish Ami's overwhelming hubris. One could only push one's luck so far. "Your Exterminator is now at the end of a doomed timeline. I'm removing it from the board."

"The Exterminator uses Emergency Temporal Shift as a reaction to retreat to the last branching point," Ami said as if it was obvious.

Hazō smirked, though Ami, of course, couldn't see it. "Oh, no, you don't. I sealed off the past with Timequake"—he glanced at the Continuity Stack—"three years ago."

"Interrupt by Player Three, third card from the left," Ami said. "True Love's Kiss: automatically escape from any sealed space, then remove this card from the game."

It said ever so much about Ami that she would go to the mental effort of memorising the state of the board and the contents of her hands (in sequence) in order to avoid going to the physical effort of getting up. As Hazō pondered his options, she lay on her back, gazing in fascination at the rain streaming down the frozen air above them.

"You really want to blow True Love's Kiss on saving an Exterminator?" Hazō asked. To him, using a trump card to save a horde-grade minion was like using a pre-village era painting as kindling. He didn't like the implications.

"It was only ever an illusion anyway," Ami said dreamily. "You know, a target on one of my Hot Springs infiltrations once tried to woo me with a scroll of Lightning Country fairy tales—an unexpurgated edition, of the kind forbidden for export. There was a story about a sage living in a castle made of glass hidden on the peak of the highest mountain. I always wondered why someone would build something that tempted fate so much."

The flow of the conversation had reached the right point, Hazō judged.

"Hey, Ami. Can I ask you a question?"

"People often do," Ami agreed. "What can I do to make you love me, Ami? Why are you still alive when my husband is dead, Ami? Why is everything on fire, Ami?"

"My question for you is this," Hazō said. "If you could have anything you want, but you don't know what you want, what do you take?"

"Everything," Ami said without hesitation. "How could there possibly be any other answer?"

Uninformative but fair, Hazō reflected. Thinking about it, he'd be very disappointed in the kind of person who, when told they could have anything they wanted, kept their ambitions narrow.

"Player Five's turn," Ami said. "I play the first card from the left on your Primal Progenitor in the underground layer. Lance of Lengthiness: target cannot move or use abilities while this artefact is in play."

Hazō silently cursed. Player Two did have Deva Invasion in his hand, but he was saving that as an offensive move for when he could tie down her Chakra Golem Guardians. That meant letting her have free run of the underground layer, and if she'd already drawn the Drill Pendant…

Ami bounced to her feet, a foolhardy action given she was fairly tall and air domes traditionally weren't. "Feeling hungry yet, Hazō?"

The Yabai Café's finest creation sat on a low table off to the side. It looked like an ordinary apple strudel. It smelled like an ordinary apple strudel. It sounded like an ordinary apple strudel (which is to say it didn't make any sound whatsoever, something one couldn't take for granted with Yabai Café food). It was terrifying. Hazō would have called it a lie if you told him a mere foodstuff could have a jōnin aura, but it was a fact that his hand started shaking in anticipation of certain death when he so much as thought of reaching out for it. After an initial back-and-forth (no, the guest should have the honour of the first bite; no, the person who bought it should have the honour of the first bite; no, the girl should have the honour of the first bite; oh, so this is a date then, Hazō?; etc.), they had decided that the first bite would be a consolation prize for the last player out. It had brought true passion to their battle of wits.

"Player Six's turn," Hazō said. "I play Chaos Brand on Player Seven: roll the dice to assign the target of your next card randomly. Since we're above the treeline, I can play it according to sky rules, meaning you take no damage, but you also don't get to roll for resistance." And that made a time element ability, followed by a space element artefact, followed by a mirage element art. He could cash in that partial combo now, or if he could manoeuvre Ami into completing the full set without her noticing…

Best to keep the conversation going, then, before she had a chance to analyse the board.

"I've been worried about Keiko lately," he began.

"You and everyone else," Ami said. "There's only so much of this a sane person can take. We've got the Yamanaka on board now, but the Ino-Shika-Chō have weirdly little experience manipulating public opinion on a village scale, and I don't know how much time we have. Keiko's been doing a lot of mental training recently for Snowflake's benefit, so that helps, but there's only so much you can insulate someone in her position from the outside world. Trust me, you do not want to see a Mori snap. I don't suppose you'd consider committing some more treason to take attention off her? Pretty please?"

"I only commit treason on my own schedule," Hazō said. "Which is to say never, because I am a loyal Leaf ninja, and the very idea is insulting."

Ami sighed. "That's how it goes. A lifetime of loyal service, then you cross one teeny little line, and suddenly your local tinpot dictator's telling you your life hangs by a thread."

"That bad?" Hazō asked sympathetically.

Summer disappeared. The air dome turned to ice, jagged and black with hatred. The rain itself froze in place where it touched the surface.

"Who in the Abyss is she to look down on me?" Ami hissed. "A woman who only became clan head by selling out her own sister. A warrior who's not strong enough to protect the village and a diplomat who throws away what could have been her second strongest ally in the world. A figurehead who got the hat handed to her by the clans without ever having to lift a finger. A jōnin in her forties, and what does she have to show for it? What does she have to hold up against what I've accomplished at nineteen? Why does someone who's paid as much as I have for genius have to plead for her life before mediocrity?"

The cold disappeared as abruptly as it came.

"This is my life now," Ami said. "But more importantly, you were talking about Keiko."

"I was." Hazō resisted the temptation to rub some warmth back into his limbs. The chill was just a product of his imagination, after all… right?

"I think one of the pressures on Keiko right now is that her loyalties are being stretched three ways. She's a Gōketsu first and foremost, but she's also a Nara. There are tensions there, since while we're technically allies, the Nara aren't exactly on the closest of terms with us for completely arbitrary and unimportant reasons. But she's also a KEI coordinator, which is a separate set of responsibilities that risks conflicting with the other two. That sounds like a nightmare to juggle."

Ami shrugged. "That's what happens when you have loyalties."

"It's also something only you can help with," Hazō went on. "I have a strong suspicion that two of those three, at least, have goals that are flexible enough, and compatible enough, that we could get rid of a lot of the friction by putting them in the open. But since you're the only one who knows what your objective for the KEI is, you're the only one who can make it happen. I realise you enjoy being unpredictable, and maybe sacrificing some of that would reduce your advantage, but would you consider doing it anyway? For Keiko?"

"What are you really asking, Hazō?" Ami asked after a second. "I am not the KEI. The KEI is not me. That would be a rookie mistake. If you're asking me, then I think what you're really asking is whether my goals are compatible with your Uplift."

"And supposing I were?"

"It's a sweet, naïve idea," Ami said. "Changing the world to change humanity. The First Hokage tried that—united the clans to stop them warring against each other; introduced the village system. Clan vendettas became economic rather than military, and in exchange he invented the concept of world war. Making the in-group bigger didn't get rid of it—it just amplified its need for enemies. I think your efforts are doomed to fail, and they're doomed to fail in a way that unleashes chaos on a scale Senju Hashirama couldn't imagine."

"Does that mean our goals are incompatible?"

Ami gave him a look. "Viability aside, you're one of the very few agents trying to stop humanity from destroying itself. What am I, an idiot?"

Hazō smiled.

"I don't think you're an idiot. But I can't help noticing you've also avoided telling me what you want. So I'm going to share my theory with you. I don't think you want anything in particular. I think you're shooting for the stars because the alternative is standing still, and standing still is death. Neither of us could imagine it. But your only actual priorities are freedom and power—"

"And fun," Ami interjected.

"So if you can secure those, you'll be able to do whatever it is you want, whenever you figure out what that is. Until then, you're trying to stay dissociated from everything, to be numb to love and hate, because the alternative is being stuck with attachments. How does that sound?"

Ami gave a delighted laugh. "Oh, Hazō. Every time I think you're getting predictable"—her gaze took in the rooftop platform, the air dome, the Game of Games board with its dozen different types of tokens, and the Yabai Café cake, with its purple swirling aura of doom slowly expanding as the game drew closer to its end—"you come out with something like that to surprise me. I knew there was a reason I came here instead of Sand."

Yes. Her name was Keiko. Some things about Ami were deep and impenetrable mysteries, but that was not one of them.

"If that's true," Hazō said, "I can work with it. I'm Keiko's family and head of the Gōketsu, and neither of those are likely to change anytime soon, so at the very least, you shouldn't have any reason to work against me."

Ami didn't say anything, and went back to studying the rain streaming down the air dome.

"No, they aren't, are they?" she asked quietly.

"Ami?"

"Player Seven's turn. I spend four red mana to play Berserker's Joy on the Blazing Demon, unleashing its Almighty Conflagration form. That puts its damage value over the airship's structural integrity score. The airship board and all minions on it are permanently removed from play."

"Ami," Hazō repeated, hiding his satisfaction at the fact that she'd taken the bait and sacrificed one of her strongest pieces in exchange for an expendable rag-tag strike team. "What are you thinking?"

"None of this was supposed to happen," Ami said after a pause. "I figured at most, Keiko might eventually get a nice boyfriend, whom I'd break and reshape into a worthy husband. She wasn't supposed to get siblings. How would that even happen?"

"But it did."

"It's my own fault," Ami said. "I made light of the transitive property."

Hazō took a moment to remember what one of those was, then another to soak in the implications.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"I don't know what I'm saying," Ami said. "Forget it. It's your turn."

The idea coalesced, bit by bit, inside Hazō. It was alien, and a little frightening, and simultaneously so obvious that he wondered how it had taken so long. It was also dangerous, in ways he couldn't quite put his finger on, and there was a strong case for burying it again and pretending he'd never thought of it. Some things could never be taken back. Assuming he'd read her correctly in the first place, and wasn't about to make an absolute fool of himself.

"Ami," he said carefully, looking into her eyes, "would you like to be family?"

"Hazō," she said equally carefully, "I have no idea what that means."

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I say," Ami said. "Insofar as Ken and Yuri disqualified themselves from the label, and insofar as I have never required close emotional bonds other than with Keiko, and certainly no acceptable candidates were forthcoming, it is a term ungrounded in personal experience. I have never required family; in fact, I would have strongly preferred the absence of same. Unfortunately, I was not consulted at the stage when you made yourself my adopted brother, and to the extent that the bond is real enough for Keiko, such that even the most critical errors on your part have failed to break it, that is not among my options."

"Player Eight's turn," Hazō said, buying himself time to think. "I play Grasping Hand on the aquatic layer. Your Psychic Acrobat has 0 defence against water element attacks and drowns immediately."

"Player One's turn," Ami said. "Say, you're looking a little peaky there, Player Three.

"No, no, I'm fine," Ami insisted. "I've totally got this.

"Oh, really?" Ami asked. "I can't help noticing you're on only 5 HP after Hazō's Salt Burial got you last round. Why, if I hadn't played Emergency Retcon as an interrupt, you wouldn't even be here right now.

"I just didn't have the cards, I swear, Player One! I can still make a comeback!

"Hmm. What say you, Player Five?

"Clearly, Player Three has failed us. You must not.

"Hear, hear! There's no room for failure in the Cosmic Empire of Ami!

"Uh, yes, thank you, Player Seven. That's that, then. I play Invisible Seventh Child onto the mythical layer and immediately use its Steal Breath ability. Player Three takes 5 damage. Since that was her final breath, I get another turn."

Oh. Oh, no.

"I play the Eldritch Octopus onto the surface layer, and advance the Doom Track by one. Despite the name, the Eldritch Octopus is an earth element creature… so that's a full sequence of seven elements and seven effect types. I take a card from the greater artefact deck."

Hazō steeled himself for the horrors about to come his way.

"Oh," she added at the last second, "I also play Mists of Preservation to take the card face down. Something for you to look forward to."

Hazō shuddered and decided to put off the inevitable in favour of more significant concerns.

"But about what you were saying—"

"Hey, was that a flash of light? Hazō, exactly how well-protected is this thing against a direct lightning strike?"

"I… don't know," Hazō admitted. "I doubt anyone's ever done anything like this before. Maybe we should get down."

Ami nodded. "Guess I'll be using this now, then." She pulled out the artefact card. "False Goddess of the Bells: erase any one entity from the timeline. I choose the Cosmic Empire of Ami."

"You do what?"

"Per the rules, Players One, Three, Five, and Seven are defined as a single joint entity for the purpose of cards targeting allies. That joint entity has now never existed. Players Two, Four, Six, and Eight, enjoy fighting over who gets to eat the cake."

You have received 4 + 1 - 1 = 4 XP.

Bonus fun-to-write XP included.

What do you do?

Voting ends on Saturday 29th of August, 9 a.m. New York time.