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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Velorien said:
"For what it's worth," Pain said softly, "we really did try to take the path of least suffering. We had the firepower to level villages. We had the knowledge to trigger a new world war." He looked pointedly between the clan heads and the Mizukage.

"Either would have made our work much easier."

Insight flared in Minori's mind like Lord Jiraiya's incredible final technique. Suddenly, she knew how Uzumaki Naruto had really been kidnapped. She knew why none of her friends had come back from their secret mission, and why the Third's hitherto concealed illness suddenly got so much worse that he wasn't even receiving visitors. She knew what Momochi Zabuza had been about to say.

She also knew that this was the kind of knowledge, or at least infallible logic, that got people dying tragically in a skirmish on some distant border.

"I don't expect you to forgive us. I don't even expect you to understand. But I would at least like to go down in your memories as a well-intentioned madman rather than a bloodthirsty one."

"We'll-intentioned?" Tsunade spat. "What, you want to be patted on the back for being less of a murderer than you could be?" She gestured around her, as if to indicate the entire world. "You think you have some noble ideal that justifies killing Jiraiya? Killing Oro? Killing everyone else who had the guts to stand against you?"

"Yes," Pain said simply.

"Why?"

The question, more like a whimper, broke the hollow silence. Everyone turned to stare at Minori, and she suddenly realised that it was hers.

"Because ever since the Sage's failure, we've been living in a broken world. Because after a thousand years of sacrifice, the Five are still sealed, and I was born with the power to subjugate the Nine. Above all, because I had true friends who, each for their own reasons, lent me their strength so that I could finish what my precursor started."

"A broken world?" Lord Hyūga demanded incredulously. "The Sage of Six Paths gave us civilisation. He created order. He chose the best of mankind and granted them the power and wisdom they needed to guide the rest! He saved us from anarchy!"

"He gave us ninjutsu," Pain said calmly. "The power for one ninja to kill a dozen with the wave of a hand. A hundred civilians. If I wanted to, right now I could kill thousands of them before sunset. Does it make you happy that you have that power? Does it make you happy that of the countless men and women in the world, only a handful dare to share your joy? Only a handful dare to to support you in your sorrow? Does it make you happy that your people obey you only because the alternative is worse?"

"Medical ninjutsu," Lady Tsunade said. "Try and argue that one away, you self-righteous asshole."

Pain nodded. He was either unable or unwilling to move any more of his body. Minori was reluctantly impressed that he was able to hold a conversation at all while carrying on with his unimaginably complex ritual.

"The best thing that ever happened to this world," he agreed. "Now tell me, Lady Senju, how many of the people medical ninjutsu saves would not need saving if they hadn't gone to war in the first place? How many more doctors would you have taught if we were all just civilians, and the people with the mental skills necessary to be a doctor weren't made combat ninjutsu users? How much more research would you all have conducted together?"

Lady Tsunade gritted her teeth.

"Chakra beasts," Hōzuki, the Mist swordsman, said dismissively. "End of discussion, can we get on with figuring out how to kill him now?"

"Chakra beasts," Pain repeated. "'Chakra' being the operative word. But you're right—I'm not going to float here and argue with you. I doubt it would buy me enough time.

"You've killed my friends. We've killed yours. I think trying to make more of it than that would be an insult to their conviction. But now we're at an impasse. If you kill me, the ritual is aborted partway. There will be no survivors, and I hope you've evacuated the island before coming here. If you don't kill me, the ritual will be completed and I will bring about world peace."

"That's right,"Hōzuki said. "We'll just bank on some kid using a cobbled-together ritual to reshape the entire world in exactly the right way when the Sage of Six Paths himself couldn't manage it. Whatcha reckon, Lady Mizukage, can we go home now?"

"There is a time and place for humour, Hōzuki," the Mizukage said coolly. "In your case, it is never and nowhere. Now be silent."

Hōzuki clicked his tongue disrespectfully, but obeyed.

"Jiraiya of the Three is dead," Pain said. "So is Sasori. We killed Orochimaru some time ago. I doubt there's any ninja left alive who can decipher and undo this seal in time."

"Oro was here until the end," Lady Tsunade growled. "He died a hero."

For the first time, Pain flinched in surprise.

"He really was the best of us," he said thoughtfully after a second. "He had the resolve to leave. The resourcefulness to survive our assault. The courage to challenge what he knew were impossible odds. Perhaps if he'd fought with us rather than against us…"
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Re-reading this chapter and wow, it's the same talking points as the Rats. The exact same.
Even though Hazou internally called out that they are the same, it's surprising to me.
...Do these guys know each other? We should really ask.
 
If a single random enemy attack destroys our critical secret asset, then we have to assume that neither the attack was random, nor the asset was secret. Therefore we need to assume that a foreign power knows something about Leaf having nukes and their connection to Akane.

Right now their situation is "our country killed a Leaf ninja that supposedly had a powerful technique". That's not something the other villages would publicly approve. But after Leaf nukes Isan that becomes "Leaf has nukes and is able and ready to destroy other villages in defiance of anything they both agree to, we have evidence". And that's the end of Leaf.

Signs of a hellstorm in an almost uninhabited area of Leaf would serve as evidence, I guess. If that was a new jutsu or a seal, then it has to be developed. This was the spot of its final testing.
 
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re:Necromancy Planning

It's a ground truth that we would prefer this rift destroyed, rather than letting it fall into Akatsuki's hands, right? That's essentially a global loss condition for us, since they may retrieve Pain and then usher in the apocalypse they'd planned. Our position would be unrecoverable. And we don't necessarily think this specific rift is necessary for us: with enough sealing, we'd be able to make a new one from scratch.

Conversely, for them, our having control is not a global loss. They would still be more powerful, able to dictate some conditions for us, or maneuver in the new world order we'll create for their advantage. Uplift is not incompatible with what they want. And they have much fewer reasons to believe that the rift is realistically replicable.

This asymmetry is exploitable.

So what I'm thinking is that we take the rift hostage. I'd outlined it before. Figure out how to open the rift, then rig it to permanently close if we stop maintaining it in some complicated way. Concretely, I'm thinking something like a two-seal system of a timer and a rift-destroyer. The timer needs to be rewound every N days by a combination of complicated, only-known-to-us chakra manipulations + our chakra signature. If it ticks to zero, it activates the rift-destroyer.

(Edit: And I'm reasonably sure we can make those seals. Closing the rift should be much easier than opening it; I may be misremembering, but I think we even had an explicit in-universe confirmation of that from Kagome? So we make a seal like this, and then the second component is just a lock seal with a TN higher than Hazou can roll.)

It's not perfect, no. They may try to reverse-engineer and peel apart this setup, or try to counter-extort us. But the former wouldn't be trivial given how skilled Hazou is, and we can set up some precommitment structure for the latter, where we'd rather kill ourselves and take our chances on the other side, than bend to their will. (Giving in to threats is a losing strategy anyway; all we need to do is to convince them that we really believe this. And note that our taking the rift hostage is not a "threat" in this sense. Decision-theoretically, a "threat" is something that is only for your advantage to carry our if your enemy cooperates with it; and if they don't, it's a loss/loss compared to the status quo in which you didn't make the threat. As such, them trying to torture us into opening the rift is a threat: if we don't cooperate, and e. g. let ourselves die, the Akatsuki lose compared to the world in which they didn't act against us, and instead negotiated with us. Conversely, our taking the rift hostage doesn't have this decision structure: if they don't cooperate, and keep trying to open it, and fuck it up and close the rift, that's better for us compared to the status quo in which they gained unrestricted access.)

And it's not meant to be the full solution, anyway. What this actually does is massively improving our negotiating position. After that, after we have a deathgrip on something they care about, we can talk and arrive at some compromise. Like, for example, making finding Pain the first priority, and possibly retrieving him if he's being cooperative.

This is all going to be shaky, but it's IMO a strict improvement on the A-Day, and offers us a lot of maneuverability. Also it's just the first draft, I'm sure Ami can improve on it.

Random bonus idea: We can try to get their sealmasters killed. Steal from Minato's playbook: modify our rift-opening seals to include some subtle flaws optimized to cause massive sealing failures, then "leak" them. (Mechanically, this probably rolls Mari/Ami's Deceit and Hazou's Sealing against theirs, and, well...) Edit 2: Actually I'm even more excited about this idea compared to all that finicky decision-theory stuff, let's do it.
Shrooms said:
Seems good. As one last addendum we may want to provide a strong argument about how we will avoid similar situations (IE, being duped into thinking we're helping a victim) in the future. If the Rats really are rationalist adjacent we should probably prove we learned something and updated our thinking

Might be something up @Noumero 's alley?
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Haven't read that update yet. The voting on that closes on Saturday, right? I'll get to it.
 
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Left-Hand Mutant said:
If we meet Nagato and don't think we can work with him, we can try to perma-kill him, or cripple him, or restrain him somewhere the Akatsuki will have a hard time finding him, ect. Heck, we could try to nab his eyes and run to Tsunadae. We have a lot of options.
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Can we? We also won't have chakra. He might just be better than us at taijutsu or something.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
I don't mean this as a quip or a jab, but please, speak for yourself. We've had this debate a number of times now and there has been no consensus formed about which paths are viable/unviable. You, and some others, strongly believe that A-day is a bust. Others, including me, do not. I do not believe you do this out of malice but I request you keep the current variety of opinions in mind instead of speaking as if your opinions are already the consensus.
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Yeah, that is a fair point. It wasn't on purpose but i can see how it could read as disregarding the opinion of the rest of the hivemind, sorry.
 
Black King said:
C kinda destroys B though right? Like how is Nagato aligned with our goals if he tried to destroy the world and is friends with and the leader of Itachi and Hidan who lifewiped an entire island because reasons and who (specifically Hidan) loves to kill and sacrifice people to his god?
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It might not be a contradiction if Nagato truly believed it was a legit way to achieve world peace and prosperity. After all, it might just mean we need to provide him a better alternative. Still, you're right that they don't give life as much value as we do. That's a problem, though it'll be much less so when people are able to come back.
 
We only need to wipe out everyone who knows EM and the ability to relearn it.

That means we could just wipe out most of the Takahashi clan, the ninjutsu makers and every one outside who knows it.

Velorien said:
"I, Saburō, sent by the Takahashi to speak for the ninjutsu wielders, vote yes."
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Seems to be an important title at least.

So maybe we should capture a high profile Takahasi clan member first before making any other decisions.
 
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Lord Marshal said:
Let's be honest, the Pangolins are the core of the trade network because they are the only one that accepted to be one. The Summoners decide what will be the trade network hub by accepting or refusing to collaborate. It's not like we would have said no if the Toads offered to create the trade network hub before the Pangolings, but the Toad decided to play "We don't want Noburi as a summmoner".
This is still true now, the Clans, or at least the Leaf summon clans just need to...get together and do something. Instead of wasting time moralizing from the sidelines.
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The Pangolins are hosting the Conclave because their territory is very long, meaning that almost everyone borders them and can therefore get to the meeting without traveling through anyone else's space. If eg Toad hosted then Porcupine would need to cut through, eg, Mara on the way.
 
Re: The Isan plan:

We should bring up that Shikamaru has personal interest in Isan's cessation due to their having Nara lore. In this light, I suggest a moment at the start, as we're informed of the subject of it, that we pass along a note to Kei about that. It's... something that she probably wouldn't think of on her own, but will give her a way to push back against Shikamaru if he leans in favor of Isan's destruction, without getting Shikamaru pissy at us in particular for bringing this up to the table at large.
 
Nebulus said:
A. And yet we've survived a couple of tense encounters with them. It's like fiddling with a bomb, sure, but cooperation may be possible.
B. As others have mentioned, he seems somewhat aligned with our goals. He'll probably either disagree with us but leave us alone, or straight up help us. As for Jiraiya's resurrection, it could be fine so long as Jiraiya doesn't hinder his goals; Jiraiya wants Leaf's prosperity and his family's safety above all, which doesn't run counter to world peace, wouldn't you say?
C. That's where I agree with you. I need to re-read that passage, because I still don't understand why they wanted that.
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For clarity, @Black King is factually incorrect about what Operation A-Day is in their post and you should ignore it completely in favour of @Inferno Vulpix's below it.
 
eaglejarl said:
The Pangolins are hosting the Conclave because their territory is very long, meaning that almost everyone borders them and can therefore get to the meeting without traveling through anyone else's space. If eg Toad hosted then Porcupine would need to cut through, eg, Mara on the way.
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Is this referring to pangolin+condor territories or just the pangolin?
 
_The_Bomb said:
"Ami, people only last in the Pure Lands for as long as they are remembered. You'd be hard pressed to find someone in Leaf who couldn't tell you Jiraiya's story, but Akane was just another barely-remarkable chūnin to the masses. She was, until I founded an organization will become a permanent fixture in the lives of the majority of Leaf's ninja forces, and dedicated it to her and the story of her sacrifice.

I don't know how much time I bought Akane, but the effort required damn well wasn't a waste of my time. Perhaps it slightly delayed the resurrection of those who will enshrine your desired world order — though I doubt it — but I would take that trade in a heartbeat if I means giving my loved ones a better chance to survive."
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Yeah I'm surprised hazo didn't say this as a reply tbh :V

I remember when we find that out tho, was it during our experiment with Naruto?
 
Ronike said:
So Ami here is social fu'ing us to try and get us to focus more on this, right? We have made steps to get ins with more clans, we are doing seal research, and there is definitely the issue of akane dying in this time frame. Despite this, we got pretty clearly steam rolled, at a time when we were a bit mentally vulnerable, having deployed clones and had a sealing headache.

Despite that, both she and kagome do prolly have something of a point that we could do to focus more on this perhaps? Have we even really talked to kagome much about necromancy since akane passed? Maybe that's something we ought to do, see what he thinks would be good to look into (though I suspect it will be looking into the Minato chain, like he has pushed us to a couple times).

Well, after we deal with dealing with EMing Isan.
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I don't know if she's social-fuing us or if she is in part genuinely baffled that we've left her hanging.

Honestly, what are our current plans regarding the whole A-day thing? OOC included. I think the truth of the matter is that we have been focused more on Dragonwar stuff (ES is an outcropping of that) and kind of reacted to Akane's death in the opposite way that we should have, which would have been tripling down on everything necromancy related to get her back. Though to be fair the 'who killed her' part is both still important and was time sensitive at the start.
 
MadScientist said:
A—

A slippery slope to what exactly?? If genocide is the start of the slope???
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Multiple genocides yeah, but also any possible future crimes.
Oh, the Tama know how to make mega implosion seals? Genocide.
The Hozuki have a jutsu to cause endless rain? Genocide.
etc etc.

When you are able to justify such acts to yourself by saying that these people could use these abilities in dangerous ways, where do you stop? Once you have the power and will to effortlessly annihilate cities for the "Greater Good", doesn't that make you the greater threat to civilization?
 
ProperAttorney said:
Multiple genocides yeah, but also any possible future crimes.
Oh, the Tama know how to make mega implosion seals? Genocide.
The Hozuki have a jutsu to cause endless rain? Genocide.
etc etc.

When you are able to justify such acts to yourself by saying that these people could use these abilities in dangerous ways, where do you stop? Once you have the power and will to effortlessly annihilate cities for the "Greater Good", doesn't that make you the greater threat to civilization?
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Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

[х] Armageddon Initiative
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
We knew the deal was effectively meant to be perpetual - that pulling out in the manner we did was against the spirit of the agreement.

I don't want to lie to the Rats.
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I know the QMs keep saying that, but Hazou in character does not seem to ever say or think that. He explicitly states he's acting in good faith and that ending the deal with a one month warning is fine - not that the Pangolins would be happy about it because they expected it to last longer, but not that it was a violation of the deal.

The "spirit" of the deal isn't the deal, at worst Hazou broke the spirit of the oath and isn't actually an Oathbreaker, this an important difference.

The Rats made it clear that oaths are important because it means that others can trust your word and they can't trust him because he's an Oathbreaker, but if he's not an Oathbreaker just only follows the *letter* of the Oath strictly that's still someone who can be trusted as long as they know to word future Oaths carefully.

Now it's possible that Hazou was lying to himself and to Kei, but there's nothing in story to indicate that either.
 
MadScientist said:
Can someone please recap me on A-Day and why it sucks?
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It's an overcomplicated mess that requires somewhere between two double crosses or acts of treason to successfully pull of. On top of that it basically cripples our agency to pull of large scale moves. I could go on but these are more than enough for me to consider it completely uworkable
 
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