Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

The sky was wrong. More wrong than Neji could have imagined. He was a scion of the Hyūga, the Clan that Faces the Sun, the clan that wore only the colour of pure radiance while others tainted themselves with dyes. The clan whose eyes alone were worthy of beholding the majesty of the sun, while all others would be blinded for their presumption.

What was a Hyūga in a land with no sun at all?

No, he had to focus. He was here not only as a representative of the Hyūga, but a representative of Team Gai. Neji had earned this, with the patience of a god. He had earned the right to study under Gai-sensei, his sheer potential outweighing his absolute refusal to embrace Gai-sensei's philosophy. He had earned leadership of the team, tolerating Rock Lee's antics and Tenten's refusal to talk like a normal person where anyone else would have gone insane in the first month. He had earned their trust in order to be here now. The Summon Realm was nothing more than another test of his patience set by a sadistic universe.

Neji surveyed his surroundings apprehensively. He stood on a hill in the middle of a craggy plain dotted with boulders and megaflora. From his elevated position, he could see enormous tortoises wandering the area, seemingly aimlessly. Mountains loomed in the distance on one side, a sweeping beach on another. The sky above was a horrifying green, with no visible sun or other source of light.

Neji appeared to be alone (which was odd, since it implied that his reverse-summoner had decided to abandon him as soon as he was distracted), and he took the opportunity to run a last-minute check before descending to look for the clan boss. His dress uniform was impeccable. An enormous cylindrical case (he wasn't willing to risk using seals in front of an unfamiliar clan just yet) was safely on his back. The garland of crimson clovers… he should probably remove that before the meeting, in case it turned out to be offensive (Gai-sensei's notes on the Turtle Clan were sparse, and cruelly amounted to "Be youthful and all shall be well"). The garland was a good-luck charm from Hanabi, personally picked in the forest with an elite chūnin escort, and allegedly expressed a wish for success in flower language (or, according to Hanabi, "May you bathe in the blood of your enemies until white turns to crimson and fate itself can't see you bleed"). In another pocket of his belt pouch, only because he wanted all the luck he could get, was a letter from her, wishing him fortune in battle in bewildering Isanese style—also, worryingly, with reference to the blood of his enemies.

Good enough.

But as he took his first steps in an arbitrarily-chosen direction, the hill began to shake beneath his feet. Immediately, Neji sent his chakra down in superior Hyūga chakra adhesion, only to feel it impossibly repelled, as if by a mass of chakra that refused to be stuck to with an intensity ordinary human flesh could only dream of. Taken off guard, he found himself tumbling to flat ground in a fashion so humiliating no one back on the Human Path must ever hear of it.

Then, as he picked himself up and brushed off his uniform, he realised he had not been standing on a hill at all.

"BE WELCOME ON THE SEVENTH PATH, CHILD OF MAN," boomed a voice that made the ground beneath Neji's feet tremble. A head the size of a building swivelled to study him from above, and the scale of it nearly brought him to his knees.

But it did not. He was a Hyūga, and a Hyūga prepared by Lady Hinata herself at that. To stumble here would be an insult to her and her teaching.

"Greetings, head of the Turtle Clan," Neji said, hoping this really was the clan boss and this entire plain wasn't an even bigger tortoise waiting to surprise him. "I am Hyūga Neji, aspirant to the title of Turtle Summoner. Thank you for permitting me to visit you in your home; I have no words for such an honour."

He reached for the case on his back. "This is but a trifling gift, but please accept it as my expression of gratitude."

He pulled out and unfurled Lady Hinata's enormous calligraphy scroll (or rather, her tiny calligraphy scroll, on the scale of the godlike being towering over him). Lady Hinata rarely showed others her calligraphy pieces, but it was understood within the clan that she was remarkably skilled for her age, and in time might even surpass such masters of the art as Hyūga Fude and Amori Sumitomo.

"I do not know how familiar you are with Human Path writing, but this character means 'friendship', and this one means 'respect'."

"THE FUMINAGA STYLE," the clan boss boomed. "WE ARE SURPRISED IT SURVIVED. OUR SLATES WERE ON THE SUITEKI.

"BUT THAT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE," it added before Neji found himself having to admit that he'd never heard either name. "HYŪGA NEJI, WE ARE KING KAMEHAMEHA OF THE TURTLE CLAN, FIRST AND ONLY OF THAT NAME. NOW COME, LEAP ONTO OUR HEAD, THAT TOGETHER WE MAY SING SONGS OF PRAISE TO THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH AS WE RUN ALONG THE BEACH!"

Neji's jaw dropped.

"I… uh… did you just…" he stammered helplessly.

He took a shaky step towards King Kamehameha.

"HOHOHO! HOW LONG WE HAVE WAITED TO USE THAT LINE."

"Uh," Neji said eloquently.

"No more than a human decade, my liege," a new voice replied drily.

Neji turned to see another tortoise, still huge but fit-in-a-large-building huge, whom he had completely failed to notice as he was mesmerised by the spectacle of the clan boss. The turtles he'd seen Gai-sensei summon had been a lot smaller.

"CHILD OF MAN, THIS IS KAMKŌDA, THE ROYAL KILLJOY."

"The term is 'royal chronicler', my liege," the other tortoise rebutted.

"THOSE WERE OUR VERY WORDS, WERE THEY NOT, HYŪGA NEJI?"

"Uh," Neji said with all the power of his diplomacy training.

"HOHOHO."

"Perhaps we should not tease the summoner candidate too much?" Kamkōda suggested. "Do you remember what the last one was like before he developed a sense of humour?"

"YES, KAMAITO GAI WAS AN ENTERTAINING ONE INDEED. WE FEEL DEEP SORROW AT HIS PASSING."

"Kamaito Gai?!" Neji asked without thinking. "Your Majesty," he added hastily.

"OF COURSE. THOUGH WE UNDERSTAND HE REVERED THE NAME WE BESTOWED UPON HIM TOO MUCH TO USE IN ORDINARY LIFE."

"But I thought his father's name was—" Neji cut himself off. Contradicting the monarch was unlikely to advance his cause.

"YOU SHALL BE KNOWN AS HYŪGA KAMEJI. WE TRUST THAT, UNLIKE HIM, YOU WILL BEAR THIS NAME AS A BADGE OF PRIDE WHEREVER YOU GO."

Gōketsu would have a field year.

"I-I'll do my—"

"HOHOHO."

Neji felt a wave of relief pass through him.

"YOU ARE YET FAR FROM EARNING A TURTLE CLAN HONOUR NAME, CHILD OF MAN," King Kamehameha clarified. The thought flickered through Neji's mind that maybe there wasn't that much hurry to advance as Turtle Summoner. Leaf had plenty of other summoners, after all.

Then he remembered that Gōketsu was even now growing in power as Toad Summoner. Neji would die before he allowed the smug foreigner to eclipse him.

"I will do my best, Your Majesty."

"GOOD. NOW, WE SHALL BEGIN THE TESTING."

"I am keen to prove myself, Your Majesty."

"FIRST THINGS FIRST. HAVE YOU BROUGHT A TRAINING SHELL?"

"What is a training shell?" Neji asked. He was getting a very, very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"WE FEARED SO. KAMKŌDA, SUMMON KAMUFURAJI FOR US."

"Kamufuraji is the clan tailor," Kamkōda helpfully explained. "It is very rare for her to receive orders, so she will be delighted to prepare a training shell for you."

"And what is a training shell?" Neji asked, really not wanting to know the answer.

"A GARMENT DESIGNED SPECIALLY FOR OUR SUMMONERS. IT USES A UNIQUE FABRIC THAT STRETCHES TO FIT THE WEARER'S SIZE, AND APPLIES PRESSURE THAT MIMICS THE WEIGHT OF A LIGHT SHELL ON A FRAIL HUMAN BODY. WE BESTOWED THE SECRET OF ITS CREATION ON MANKIND ONLY RECENTLY, WITH THE FOUNDATION OF THE VILLAGE HIDDEN IN THE LEAVES, SO YOUR IGNORANCE SURPRISES US."

"It's green, isn't it?" Neji said as the full awareness of how doomed he was began to dawn on him.

"WHAT OTHER COLOUR COULD IT BE?"


Neji offered thanks to the Sage a thousand times over that summoners couldn't bring other people to the Seventh Path with them, and so there was no chance of anyone seeing the greatest humiliation of his life.

"Now, Hyūga Neji, raise your flippers in jubilation and repeat after me: 'If I do not swim the length of this beach a hundred times, I will race to Plastromancer's Rock and back two hundred times without using chakra acceleration!"

"If I do not swim the length of this beach a hundred times, I will race to Plastromancer's Rock and back two hundred times without using chakra acceleration!" Neji shouted, raising his leaden arms to nearly shoulder level through raw force of will. The Turtles might have been naturally slow, but they made up for it with stamina to put the greatest of ninja to shame, and Neji was not yet the greatest of ninja.

Kamushafuto the Spinner was the first sensible-sized Turtle Neji had seen, being of equivalent age to Neji (Neji hadn't quite dared ask what that was in human years) and not that much bigger than him. Unfortunately, that was where "sensible" ended.

"Glory be to the Power of Youth!"

"Glory be to… the Power… of Youth!

"Are you sure," Neji asked, holding onto diplomacy by the skin of his teeth, "that this isn't another of His Majesty's pranks? Because if it is, I have seen through it and we can stop now."

"Are you kidding? This is how we Turtles roll. They say in the old days, Turtles past their seven-hundreds or so would get so bored of living they'd just fall asleep and not bother waking up. When Kamfaya and his Flames of Passion discovered how to be forever youthful on the inside, they saved our entire race!

"Now, start swimming! This freezing cold water is nothing with the fires of Youth to heat up your blood!"

All too late, Neji understood why the Turtles had no diplomatic relations with other clans.


"Not the best performance," Kamkōda concluded after hearing the other Turtles' reports. "Points for effort, but you'll need to be a lot more youthful if you want to win the hearts of our proud warriors. A shame Kamaito Gai is no longer with us. You will need a great deal of remedial training, and you do not yet have the stamina to keep up with our teachers. Is there another youthful human you could accept as your master?"

Neji gritted his teeth. There were exactly two people in Leaf who'd absorbed the teachings to Gai-sensei's satisfaction. One was a hyperactive homoerotic nightmare, and the other was a promoted commoner from a clan whose very existence set his teeth on edge. Calling either of them "master" was a vision out of Naraka itself… but so was failing his team and his clan.

"Now, before you depart, proclaim your love of the Spirit of Youth with us one more time."

"Hooray for the Spirit of Youth!" Neji shouted at the top of his lungs, and then unsummoned himself before he murdered someone.

As his consciousness descended into the embrace of the aether, he thought he could hear a "HOHOHO" somewhere in the distance.


Offscreen, you have received 2 + 1 = 3 XP.


• Mari doesn't recommend that Hazō learn basic genjutsu, given his inability to keep up with his basic training priorities: he's already falling behind his peers with his primary combat skill, his deceptive skills without the Iron Nerve are genin-level, and the less said about his stealth, the better.
• Mari is shocked that you would explicitly want her to perform a task non-treasonously. Strictly speaking, as civilians the yakuza might be beneath the Hokage's notice, but on the other hand, there are no circumstances under which Asuma would be happy with an individual clan conducting dealings with a foreign criminal organisation whose first loyalty is firmly to a different village. She can talk to Asuma, with the most likely outcome being that their yakuza connection will be folded into Leaf's spy network (as it would have been under Jiraiya).
• Mari's Technique Hacking love was always genjutsu, a very specific discipline, and it was the kind of love that resulted in Truth Lost in the Fog (i.e. deeply unhealthy and self-destructive), so not something Mari is keen to re-embrace. On the other hand, your idea of therapeutic genjutsu makes her think back to her first days with Keiko, when she was trying to adapt horrible mind-warping techniques of doom to that very task. Of course, the hard part with that is not the genjutsu, it's figuring out what "therapeutic" means in the first place.
• The Shadow Clone Technique isn't as helpful for Technique Hacking as you might think, since any internal failures generally involve messing up your chakra, which will then travel right back to the main body—and if you wreck a shadow clone's brain with failed genjutsu, those effects will travel right back to you as well, which is actually worse than the traditional means of using paid civilian "volunteers" as test subjects. With that said, Mari has no actual objection to learning one of the most ridiculously overpowered techniques on the planet for free.
• Asuma wants Hazō to get Hidan to establish formal contact with Leaf, either himself or via some more sane member of—some other member of Akatsuki. Trying to kill Hidan is tempting, but Akatsuki's response would be unpredictable. If Hidan wants more targets, Asuma names the Rock jinchūriki. If Hidan has already taken out half a dozen elite jōnin (Ōnoki's successors) and both jinchūriki in a single attack, then you might as well throw him at the entirety of Cloud because Jashin has clearly made him invincible.
• No messages have arrived for the Gōketsu from Mist. Mari thinks the Wakahisa must consider the deal done, and would demand an additional trade for another expert.
• Asuma grants permission for Mari to learn the Shadow Clone Technique.
• Asuma will deal with the medic-nin who saw fit to reinterpret a direct order from their Kage in the harshest way possible, namely by conveying the information to Tsunade and then washing his hands of the whole affair.
• Mizuki is indeed enjoying the hospitality of T&I, and his public execution is already scheduled. Startlingly to Mist sensibilities, it will last only a single day.
• Your town-fixing plan poses problems. First, there is a vast number of settlements in Fire. Second, in many cases, dealing with one settlement's problems could take days. Third, estate genin are not clan genin, and it is questionable whether a single clan would be allowed to tie up large numbers of them outside the village for days at a time. Fourth, Hazō's experience at Bakuchioka suggests that giving MEW walls to a single settlement is a long-term project due to the extreme chakra cost.
• Ami-style training was successful, though more due to Mari's creativity than to that of the idea itself. It belatedly occurs to you that a clan head's favours would be worth a lot in Ami's favour economy, and you may have just made Mari very rich while making yourself very doomed.

What do you do?

Voting closes on Saturday 16th of January, 1 p.m. New York time.