Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Snowflake sat on the edge of the bed, helplessly holding Kei's hand as her beloved curled silently under the covers. Kei had not had the strength to tell her, instead leaving the revelation for her to collect when she was instantiated in the morning. Snowflake had nothing to say to her yet, without time to process and thereby diverge–not that any of her words would undo the disaster the pair of them had permitted.

Snowflake was not Isan's messiah. She had never sworn an oath to protect its people. She had not existed during Uplift's first visit to Isan, or for much of the second. These facts served as an essential buffer now, as the horror and self-loathing of the person she loved most in the world flooded her mind in addition to her own.

Snowflake was Kei's creativity. She should have had some brilliant idea for saving Isan, which Kei could optimise into a Hokage-convincing master plan. She should have persuaded the Hokage to accept her as part of the conspiracy, and stood by Kei's side before him, even if all she could manage was moral support. She should have been the pessimist while Kei was busy attempting to honour Akane's teachings on hope, and anticipated the Hokage's decision, earning them more time to prepare. She should have bound Hazō in a dungeon and forced him to think of nothing but the EM problem until he generated one of his epoch-changing solutions, instead of allowing him to shift his attention to gemstones and estate beautification and other problems that weren't so easily solved by the Hokage murdering five hundred innocents.

Snowflake hated, even, that this was her first instinct. She was more aware of the preciousness and fragility of life than any other, yet her immediate thoughts were of Kei. Of having failed Kei. Of concern for Kei's well-being in the aftermath. What kind of person cared more about a single individual in front of them than about five hundred strangers in another country? What would Kei think of her when she received the memories tonight?

She squeezed Kei's hand as if in hope of answers, even though she knew better than anyone that she had none. Kei did not squeeze back. Snowflake knew she was awake only because it was impossible for her to interact with a sleeping Kei.

What could she do for her? What would help someone whom words couldn't reach, and ideally distract Snowflake from the crushing weight of her own complicity in genocide?

Her gaze fell on Kei's Nara project notebook, thrown to the floor yesterday evening and untouched since. Those projects required continued management. In fact, Kei had a meeting with Shifu from the NFF at ten. After lunch, she was to observe the Tsuchimikado Team's latest ninjutsu trial and decide whether their proposal to research a Collapsing Pitfall Trap with Spikes on the Bottom Technique merited KEI funding. Over the course of the day, her other self would interact with dozens of people whose plans were predicated on her guidance and/or support, who found reassurance or even inspiration in watching her work tirelessly on their behalf with energy beyond the Nara and education beyond the KEI, and who could absolutely not be allowed to see the Dauntless broken by her burdens, much less ones that spelled the death of any who learned of their existence.

Snowflake squeezed Kei's hand one last time for her own comfort. There were some things you could only do for a person who would never ask them of you.

The sudden burst of dysphoria barely slowed her down as she pulled the pink ribbon out of her hair and headed for the door.


The streets passed Hazō by with a blur. Vaguely, he was aware that he was taking routes that avoided major snowdrifts, made easier by the fact that he had no destination in mind. He was giving nods of acknowledgement at the appropriate depth to the occasional acquaintance who greeted him (and maybe even exchanging brief pleasantries before hurrying on). He was, and he couldn't turn it off, passively counting the people he passed in the street. He was well past five hundred now.

There was no safe harbour for Hazō to head to. He'd cancelled his meetings in case he had a repeat of the Shikamaru OPSEC incident. He didn't have the spirit for paperwork, none of which meant anything. Above all, he couldn't face Noburi or Kagome-sensei or even Atomu and make himself feel the loneliness of lying to those who wanted to help him. Or Yuno. Sage's blood, Yuno.

Meanwhile, Mari was away, doing her own thing, and maybe it was a coping mechanism or maybe she was too experienced a ninja to be fazed by the latest massacre. His messenger to Kei had been turned away. He didn't particularly feel like talking to Shikamaru. Asuma, of course, wasn't in the village right now, and Hazō had yet to figure out how he was going to look his supreme overlord in the eye at their next tutorial meeting.

Nobody could help Hazō with his guilt or his anger. On one side of the equation, the genius hadn't been smart enough. Kei would surely tell him when they next saw each other that this disaster was a product of his recklessness. He'd suspected as soon as he saw those flakes that Elemental Mastery held an important secret. He'd suspected that it was a secret with military applications, maybe even game-changing military applications (and his vague intuitions about its potential power were the only reason he was still alive right now). It had only occurred to him after it was too late that the more powerful Elemental Mastery turned out to be, the more Isan's threat rating would shoot up in the eyes of anyone who knew.

It had been information worth learning, because the existential threat from the EM storms was real and countermeasures were necessary. But he'd been the one to hand it over to Asuma–or rather, to corner himself into having to hand it over to Asuma. He'd been the one to strip himself and Akane of agency in favour of a man who deemed five hundred deaths of allied ninja acceptable after mere months of half-heartedly exploring alternatives.

That was the anger. It was Hazō's sin to place a superweapon in a murderer's hands, and Hazō's sin to then fail to solve the problem. Solving important problems, occasionally including problems he'd himself created, was Hazō's pride and his way of life. But how did those sins of folly measure up against the sin of consciously and deliberately murdering five hundred innocents?

Hazō was angry. He was furious. With himself. With Asuma. With a fate that forced him to carve away his sanity and his ethics in order to save the world when all he wanted was a moment's peace in which to uplift it.

Yet every time the anger approached a crescendo, it hit a wall. Hazō hadn't found a solution. He hadn't overturned Shikamaru's calculations or Asuma's reasoning. It was his belief that one existed, that it had been possible to save the world without destroying Isan if they'd only kept trying. Was that belief a product of rational analysis like Shikamaru's belief to the contrary, or was it just a product of faith that the universe couldn't really be that bad, the way Akane would have insisted?

Akane was dead.

Hazō knew exactly what he felt, but he no longer knew what to believe.


Usually, the Council of Mari's meeting places reflected their dominant mood. A spruced-up and expanded version of their bedroom was a comfort option. Their favourite bars each had their own, more exciting energy. Forests were peaceful and could be accented by different weather conditions. The brothels of the world hosted very specific kinds of planning meeting, while battlefields filled with figments of Mari's imagination were a perfect place to blow off steam.

Nobody was commenting on today's meeting place. The floor was Nostalgic Mari's floor of the Open Hearth Inn (though Mariko was absent today), but the walls were Scholarly Mari's bookshelves, all too reminiscent of the Hokage's Office, and the braziers roared with Wrathful Mari's flames, constantly on the point of spilling out and setting fire to them. The ceiling was a patchwork of Guardian Mari's reassuring grey stone and the jet-black of Masochistic Mari's dungeon, Bondsmith Mari's golden chains straining to hold them together and leave no gaps through which anyone could see outside–because outside there was nothing but Bleak Mari's all-consuming void.

Nobody was commenting on today's meeting place.

"So," Practical Mari said, "I think that went pretty well. What do you think, do we focus on making sure Hazō does nothing stupid in the immediate future, or take advantage of his distraction to crack on with some plans he might disapprove of if he noticed?"

Uplift Mari was smaller than ever, seated uncomfortably in the spot furthest away from Wrathful Mari's braziers.

"Pretty well?" she echoed. "Five hundred people, Practical. A village. We'd only just started to atone for a sliver of that. How are we ever supposed to find our way back now?"

Practical Mari rolled her eyes. "Spare me the sentimentality. We all know it was a done deal. We knew it the second we first heard about Elemental Mastery. We had one objective at that meeting: to make it clear that the Gōketsu respected the Hokage's authority and would abide by the Hokage's final decision. Now, I did a professional job of keeping Asuma's trust if I say so myself. Useful suggestions for the murdering and all that. Even if he starts worrying about Hazō doing something stupid, he knows we get the realities of the situation and won't let him lead the clan off a cliff based on naive morality. Meanwhile, Shikamaru is a good boy and he can keep Kei and Snowflake under control until we have a chance to work on them."

"I don't get why we're bothering," Lazy Mari drawled. "The ninjutsu's gone. The Gōketsu don't have it. What's the Hokage got to be afraid of now?"

"Hazō," Hazō-Wrangler Mari said grimly. "Our lovely daughter may only act out like a petulant teen, but if Hazō decides Asuma's an enemy because of this, he's capable of doing all kinds of very clever stupid things that'll turn Leaf into a crater, and I'd rather not be collateral damage."

"Let's not forget what happened to Akane," Courtier Mari said. "The Hokage's no Ami or Kurenai, but he's not just some bozo in a hat either. He's capable of removing threats preemptively, and we're a proliferation risk as long as we're alive. That's the reason I backed Practical's strategy in the first place."

"I… I thought we'd decided to let that be," Cautious Mari said from her corner. "There's no way to know for sure, and we all agreed that it doesn't matter because acting like he had her assassinated is just going to get us all killed."

The brazier flames nearly exploded.

"Doesn't fucking matter?!" Wrathful Mari roared from the heart of the fire. "That piece of shit killed Akane and it doesn't matter?! I should've said screw all of you and dealt with him when we had the chance. What's the fucking point of us if we just sit around and let whoever feels like it cut our family's throats one by one?"

"The point is to save as many as we can," Guardian Mari said quietly, helping Cautious Mari get out of her smouldering armour. "Nobody is being put at risk just for revenge, especially when we don't even know for sure. What do you think happens to our odds of survival if we succeed in taking out the Hokage and then it turns out it was fucking Rock gunning for the Gōketsu all along?"

"That too," Practical Mari agreed. "Playing ball with the Hokage is the optimal play. No, for as long as he's willing to kill even allies if they stand in his way, it's the only play."

"The stench of the swamp never washes off," Bleak Mari said with a strange satisfaction as above, Bondsmith Mari's chains creaked, the soul-metal starting to deform. "You bring it with you wherever you go, until you don't even realise things can smell any other way. Or maybe you bought a ticket to Tears of Red expecting to see a comedy?"


Kei was not alone. Snowflake was elsewhere, fulfilling all the duties Kei was abandoning. Shikamaru knew better than to attempt contact on his own initiative. Kei had dismissed Tenten herself, unable to endure the presence of a pure being who could not be informed of how far Kei had fallen. Miyuki could not enter the inner compound without invitation.

Nevertheless, she was not alone. She had not been alone for days.

"I always knew you would be the cause of Isan's destruction," Takahashi-sensei told her. "I will admit I assumed it would be as a result of you betraying our secrets, or leading a conquering army to our doorstep, or perhaps rallying the Five Forbidden Clans to extinguish our knowledge. I even considered the possibility that you might be such a pathetic failure of a Pangolin Summoner that Ui would smite us for giving you the scroll. Which is not to say I was wrong, considering you have somehow made genocide a habit, but it seems Ui is forgiving. I suppose he would have to be, considering his own heirs are dead and you are not."

"I caused nothing," Kei said feebly. "I protested emphatically against the decision."

"You protested," Takahashi-sensei agreed. "Commendable. I shall bear this information back to Kenji in the afterlife. Surely, he will be impressed at the lengths you went to 'to repay Ui's debt to Isan, as well as your own'."

"What was I to have done?" Kei asked. "I spent many nights debating the issue with Shikamaru. My intellect was not equal to his. I could not shatter his projections with either reasoning or data."

"Well," Takahashi-sensei said, "far be it from me to argue with your mathematics. Now, my experience of travel is limited, as I have only twice represented Isan at AMITY meetings–a quite magnificent achievement of your sister's, incidentally, which you have now betrayed, likely to its ultimate demise and the end of hope for world peace.

"Ah, forgive me, Kei. That is, of course, a pointless digression considering Isan is gone and would not enjoy its benefits in either case. No, my question was this. What is the distance between Leaf and Isan, exactly? And the average long-distance travel speed for a shinobi?"

Kei said nothing, could say nothing.

"Do your mathematics fail you?" Takahashi-sensei asked, voice rising in surprise. "I suppose that was why you could not run to Isan and warn us before it was too late. Have I understood correctly, Kei?"

"No," Kei whispered. "I… I would have been a missing-nin. I would have abandoned the Nara, the KEI, the Gōketsu, the Rainbow Fire… everyone who depends on me."

Takahashi-sensei laughed. "A missing-nin? You? You would have been adopted into Isan with open arms as our saviour. Do you imagine Leaf would dare object when Isan had Elemental Mastery as leverage? I could have made you my own granddaughter, and you and I would have worked side by side to contain and control it. Nobody would have had to die if you were only prepared to sacrifice your lifestyle."

"But… They need me…"

"Oh, nonsense," Takahashi-sensei touched his forehead in an Isanese gesture of dismissal. "The Nara have Shikamaru. The KEI has Ami. The Gōketsu have Mari. What value could someone of your talents possibly think you were adding versus the value of five hundred lives only you could save?"

…

"Do you remember the expression I taught you during your training?" Takahashi-sensei asked. "The tapir does not raise its snout when the south wind blows."

Kei nodded, confused. "It means a man receives only one opportunity to prove himself in his life."

"One ultimate opportunity," Takahashi-sensei clarified. "A chance to demonstrate who he is, to the world and to himself, such that no other event in his life will bring him the same infusion of clarity. For you, Kei, that opportunity just came and went. What have you learned about yourself?"

Kei could not look at him. "That I cannot protect anything. That they will always die, as individuals or en masse, and my efforts will always be too pathetic to save them."

"Why?"

"Because the universe is too cruel."

"No."

"Because I am too weak."

"No."

"Because…" The words would not come.

"Say it."

"Because… I do not care enough."

The words echoed in the void.

"I was aware that Akane's life was in danger, yet I did not marshal every resource at my disposal to save her because I did not love her enough. I was aware of Isan's imminent destruction, yet I did not exhaust my every option and dedicate myself, heart and soul, to its salvation because I did not care enough.

"I am not a good person like Akane, and despite my delusions, could never be like her. I am cold and distant, and I do not love people as she did or seek to make bonds with them as she did. I claim to be motivated by duty and responsibility, but if I truly cared about the people I describe as in my care, I would seek to connect with them instead of being… afraid of them. I would strive to fundamentally change their lives as Hazō does. If I truly cared, I would step into the sunlight for their sake instead of living half-shrouded in darkness."

Takahashi-sensei nodded. "Good. I'm glad you are finally being honest with yourself. Now, tell me, Kei. Do you think it is reasonable or just that such a person should continue to be alive while Akane, whom she killed with her apathy, is dead? While I and my family, my clan, my entire people, whom she killed with her apathy, are dead?"

"...It is not."

Takahashi-sensei smiled.

Kei had long since calculated her optimal scenario. The ideal criteria were that no human being be accused of causing her death, no human being be traumatised by witnessing her corpse, and no human being suffer harm beyond what was inevitable from the fact of her no longer being alive. Reliability was also an important concern, followed by swiftness and minimisation of pain–and, if possible, positive utility to someone.

Kei's plan, therefore, was to make it known that she was responding to a summons by Orochimaru (ideally, she would have a reliable witness escort her to the compound), create an excuse to enter the Basement (volunteering should suffice), and then commit suicide in a fashion that suggested attempted vivisection or dissection. The preferred means, out of a number of options, would be to imbibe a fatal amount of some medical reagent that Orochimaru might plausibly use.

Naturally, she would leave Shikamaru a note with the truth in order to ensure he exploited the situation instrumentally rather than acting irrationally for vengeance's sake. He could then inform Hazō at a suitable juncture if it became necessary, but she hoped it would not. Hazō would surely be happier believing that she had been betrayed and murdered than that she had chosen to take her own life.

Her next step, then, was to research a suitable reagent. Obviously, this would require the utmost subtlety, but she could request that Snowflake–

Snowflake.

"Unfortunately," she informed Takahashi-sensei, "suicide is not an option."

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Surely if you–"

"No."

"But–"

"No," Kei repeated. "Suicide would require us both to consent, and were Snowflake suicidal, I would expend every possible effort to dissuade her."

Takahashi-sensei arched an eyebrow. "Every possible effort? You?"

"...Yes."

Takahashi-sensei was silent for several seconds.

"Do you think the fact that you've found a reason to live absolves you of the sin of slaughtering my people?"

"No," Kei said. "It is my responsibility to extend my lifespan as far as possible for Snowflake's sake. Thus, I must plan to bear that sin for an extremely long time, the shinobi world permitting."

"A futile effort," Takahashi-sensei said. "It has already crushed you, and will grow no lighter. How can someone like you possibly hope to have a future?"

How?

No one else came to her aid. Ami, Hazō, Noburi, Mari, Kagome, Tenten, Miyuki, Naruto, Ino… all of them were equal to the ideals they chose for themselves. None of them could teach her a way of living for oathbreakers. Even Shikamaru, who had sided with the Hokage, had done so in the sincere belief that it was part of his inescapable duty to preserve the world.

…

Kei possessed one of those.

"Don't be ridiculous," Takahashi-sensei scoffed. "You stood by while my village was massacred to the last shinobi. Where was your so-called duty then?"

"The duty is not to any village or group," Kei told him. "It is to the world. I failed to protect Isan, and the preventable deaths of five hundred innocents will be permanently on my conscience, but that is separate from the fact that my duty, in this case the enforcement of non-proliferation, was successfully fulfilled."

"Is that how you intend to justify this to yourself, Kei?" Takahashi-sensei asked. "Is genocide acceptable as long as you can associate it with a loftier goal?"

Clarity began to emerge.

"No," Kei said. "Justifications only matter to the just."

Takahashi-sensei stared as he had when Kei first used the Frozen Skein to calculate the correct pattern for the dimensional manifold of the Summoning Technique in twelve minutes instead of spending the day cross-referencing diagrams. "You intend to quote Jiraiya's A Practical Guide to Depravity as your ethical foundation?"

"Every Mori and every Nara," Kei said, "is raised with the understanding that the duty may sometimes require lesser atrocities in order to prevent greater ones. Neither the kami nor the ancestors nor the Will of Fire possess the omniscience needed to stand over us in judgement and state for a fact whether a given atrocity was truly necessary. Even history cannot judge us, for it cannot see what exponential ripples a different decision would have given rise to. As none have the power to vindicate us, we do not seek justice. We seek efficiency. Shikamaru is not tormenting himself over whether Isan's destruction was a moral act. He is tormenting himself over whether he purchased enough security for the world with those five hundred lives. If he was inefficient, if the same result could have been achieved with fewer sacrifices, or he did not achieve as much security with that number of sacrifices as he could, that is a betrayal of the fallen and our own definition of sin.

"That logic leaves only one course of action open to me now. I must ensure that Isan's sacrifice is not wasted, for if Elemental Mastery proliferates now, it will mean those five hundred deaths were for nothing.

"I can never follow Akane's path. That much should have been obvious to me from the beginning. However, she also cannot follow mine. Efficiency does not demand the capacity to love; it demands a willingness to sacrifice."

"And what is it you intend to sacrifice, Kei?" the phantom of Takahashi-sensei asked as it began to fade back into oblivion.

"Were you not listening?" Kei replied. "Whatever my duty requires."


Kei has raised her Deceit to 15. She will inform Hazō that she wishes to train it further in order to facilitate better OPSEC, both on Elemental Mastery and on the many other secrets her various organisations entrust her with.


What do you do?

Voting closes on Jun 17, 2023 at 1:00 PM