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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Orisha91 said:
Yeah, but the eventual conclusion leads to feeding his urges. He's not even abiding by the balance thing; he's killed way more people than he saved. And AMITY doesn't count since it came about indirectly.
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Paperclipped said:
"Lord Jashin's all about balance!" Hidan said, gesturing wildly with his scythe and cutting three rough slashes into the wall of an adjacent house. All the local civilians had been evacuated by ninja moving to clear the way before the international terrorist, but Hazō still made a mental note to pay for the repairs. "Life and death. Gluttony and starvation. Hot and cold. Forest and desert. You do something for Lord Jashin, and he does something for you. The weight of your sins punishes you in the end, the value of your actions rewards you.
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I think that means the balance thing isn't so much a personal rule for Jashinists as one for Jashin himself - he equalises things. Every life ends in death, if you shorten lifespans maybe that means you "balance" them more quickly, which Jashin appreciates, so you did something for him and now he'll do something for you. Balance. According to Hidan every duality/opposition/dichotomy falls within Jashin's domain, which makes him... I don't know, embody balance, rather than expect it?
 
Lysbeth Succubus said:
I think that means the balance thing isn't so much a personal rule for Jashinists as one for Jashin himself - he equalises things. Every life ends in death, if you shorten lifespans maybe that means you "balance" them more quickly, which Jashin appreciates, so you did something for him and now he'll do something for you. Balance. According to Hidan every duality/opposition/dichotomy falls within Jashin's domain, which makes him... I don't know, embody balance, rather than expect it?
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I'm guessing he looks at humanity collapsing as settling up with Jashin then? But if humans go extinct, eventually Jashin will no longer get worthy sacrifices.
 
Orisha91 said:
I'm guessing he looks at humanity collapsing as settling up with Jashin then? But if humans go extinct, eventually Jashin will no longer get worthy sacrifices.
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No idea what he thinks on that, I'd assume if humanity collapses then life and death are not balanced so that should still be avoided? but pretty sure that his full religious thought processes are infohazards
 
King of Hell: What? You think I want sacrfice? That's nonsense. I am just a bureaucrat, an administrator, a judge. I would appreciate if my workload isn't so high.
 
[] The Greatest Virtue
A version without the SIN nuke, haven't put it together yet
[X] The Greatest Virtue is Conviction
251 words
Channel Kagome. These civilians are under our protection, they're our family however distant.
-1 FP Declare a prepped SIN20 in Hazō's kit

Hidan clearly misunderstands the dynamic we're in - Hidan is within melee range of a sealsmaster, the only things happening are what we want. We have a weapon fully capable of erasing Hidan, though it will also unfortunately take us and the hamlet with him.

If Hidan is violent towards Hazō, anyone else, or tries to leave before Hazō gives the okay, set off the SIN. Keep a MARS in each hand in case Hidan gets the jump and cuts an arm off.

•You said earlier today that everyone is equal before Jashin. Man, woman, ninja, civilian, it doesn't matter.
•Now you claim that these people are acceptable sacrifices because they don't matter? Heresy.
•Our lives are equal, Hidan. If you insist that any of these people die know that the both of us will go with them.
•I swore to protect these people, and you will not break my conviction.

•The world is not balanced. There is not enough new life to keep up with the death; and Jashin has already been trying to tell you that. I'm alarmed that you think the visions you described were opaque, Hidan.
•I won't speak to the other two, but your scythe creating lives rather than ending them cannot be more clear.
•It's okay that it's unintuitive for you, that's what I'm for. I'll teach you how to find the weeds in Jashin's garden, you help me pull them.
 
[x] Action Plan: Jashin Take the Wheel

@Noumero, nice plan! One thing I'd recommend; Hidan said that just as mercy was Jashin's greatest sin, conviction is His greatest virtue. The first half of this plan where we commit to murder them if we have to is really tapping into that and our sky-high Resolve stat, which is awesome! But, could you perhaps make it more explicit? Something like:
  • Show Hidan our conviction
I think if we do that as we get ourself into our mindset to slaughter them if needed, it would go far into showing him that we're doing as Jashin wants.
 
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Still taking in plans, but if we slaughter a village - or even a significant portion of one - under the current circumstances we might be in really deep shit when getting home. Last time we were caught by surprise, got out discreetly, and managed to stop most of the killing, in a remote village that nobody powerful cared about. This time we were walked out of the kage's office publicly, strolled around the village escorting Hidan, who was loudly discussing Hazo's Jashinism, and then followed him out to a village with a lot more eyes on it, given that we have an uplift project in progress. This would be impossible to cover up and a direct blow to the Kage's authority - sure, intelligent people who reason carefully might understand everything that went down, but what everyone else makes out of it will be a long the lines of "our Kage invited/approved of the Akatsuki member here to do evil slaughter (probably featuring dark (and worse, heretical) rituals) with a clan head" or "our Kage is too weak to stop the Akatsuki and rogue clan heads from slaughtering villages".

Maybe we can avoid execution if everyone agrees to blame Hidan, but that seems like it'd damage AMITY; maybe I'm off on how cynical ninja leadership is, but if the supposed enforcers are slaughtering villages, not just in remote areas of the world that it's difficult to tax anyways but right under their noses, that seems like a problem!
 
_The_Bomb said:
[x] Action Plan: Jashin Take the Wheel

@Noumero, nice plan! One thing I'd recommend; Hidan said that just as mercy was Jashin's greatest sin, conviction is His greatest virtue. The first half of this plan where we commit to murder them if we have to is really tapping into that and our sky-high Resolve stat, which is awesome! But, could you perhaps make it more explicit? Something like:
  • Show Hidan our conviction
I think if we do that as we get ourself into our mindset to slaughter them if needed, it would go far into showing him that we're doing as Jashin wants.
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@Noumero, could you possible add the words I mentioned before voting closes? You liked it, so I got the sense you agreed with me. I can help you find wordcount if it's an issue.
 
_The_Bomb said:
@Noumero, could you possible add the words I mentioned before voting closes? You liked it, so I got the sense you agreed with me. I can help you find wordcount if it's an issue.
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Does this work for you?:
Noumero said:
[x] Action Plan: Jashin Take the Wheel
Word count: <400.
  • Mindset: Prepare yourself to slaughter these people.
    • Your theological arguments won't work if Hidan thinks they're a rationalization. You can't deceive him. If you want to avoid a massacre, you need to be genuinely willing to commit it.
    • Put on extreme-utilitarian glasses. Recognize these people's global unimportance compared to your agenda. Imagine Akane's killers in their place. Commit to resurrect them. Recall how much of the world's brokenness stems from people's own choices; everyone, including those villagers, is complicit. Dip into Out to see them as meatsacks. Whatever works.
    • If your ploy fails? Yup, go slaughter them.
    • Conviction is the greatest virtue.
  • Thus resolved, start a theological argument. Not because you want to save these people; let go of that desire. Do it because you think Hidan is failing Jashin.
    • He said Jashin's all about balance. The world is not in balance. Humanity is projected to go extinct within the century, and then there'd be no more birth nor deaths, just the suffering-incapable beasts.
    • Hidan's unaimed slaughters are a contributing factor. Those buffets may please Jashin short-term, but they're like eating the seeds while the whole crop's failing. What needs killing are the weeds threatening civilization: those defecting against it, the warhawks, monstrosities like the Dragons.
    • Why else'd Jashin chosen Hazou, whose ideology is as far from Hidan's modus operandi as it gets? Why'd he favour Hazou so blatantly it made Shikamaru freak out?
    • If Jashin governs life and death — well, Hidan fills the High Priest of Death slot's pretty well. But his Life counterpart seems missing. Your spot, maybe?
  • Which's all just speculation, of course. Hidan refused to explain the metaphysics; but you're refusing to do things just on his say-so.
    • If Hidan's just being an essie and wants to make you kill people for funsies, all the talk of "Jashin" a rationalization? Okay, that tracks.
    • If Hidan wants to actually serve Jashin? He better convince you this slaughter is net-beneficial.
  • Play it by ear from there.
    • Don't resurrect your desire to save these people; don't rationalize reasons why Jashin won't want this slaughter.
    • Genuinely determine whether it's what benefits Jashin. Accept whatever conclusion emerges.
    • Perhaps Jashin's mechanically restricted: only able to empower its disciples for killing. If so, you're willing to do it — but it without harming Civilization. Let's go kill some bandits.
    • Dip into Out to have better insight into alien mentality.
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Noumero said:
He said Jashin's all about balance. The world is not in balance. Humanity is projected to go extinct within the century, and then there'd be no more birth nor deaths, just the suffering-incapable beasts.
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HIDAN: What's the math on that?

HAZOU: Uh...

Alternatively, Hidan asks how Hazou knows this, and Hazou flashbacks to the EM Nuke conversation. I'm not sure how to write this properly.
Noumero said:
Why'd he favour Hazou so blatantly it made Shikamaru freak out?
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HIDAN: You told the Five about Lord Jashin!? You must die!

(is "made Shikamaru freak out" necessary here?)
Noumero said:
If Jashin governs life and death — well, Hidan fills the High Priest of Death slot's pretty well. But his Life counterpart seems missing. Your spot, maybe?
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MadScientist.jpg
Noumero said:
Perhaps Jashin's mechanically restricted: only able to empower its disciples for killing. If so, you're willing to do it — but without harming Civilization. Let's go kill some bandits.
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I would recommend not implying, even mentally, that Jashin has physical limits or restrictions, as this may be taboo for Hidan.
Noumero said:
Dip into Out to have better insight into alien mentality.
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I would suggest entering this state earlier than later, but that's a personal opinion and not a conclusion based on any cost/benefit analysis.
 
faflec said:
HIDAN: What's the math on that?

HAZOU: Uh...

Alternatively, Hidan asks how Hazou knows this, and Hazou flashbacks to the EM Nuke conversation. I'm not sure how to write this properly.
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I doubt he's going to ask for math; if he does, we can just go over to the Nara compound and do so. But I'm pretty sure high-level informal arguments will suffice.
HIDAN: You told the Five about Lord Jashin!? You must die!

(is "made Shikamaru freak out" necessary here?)
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Hidan is going all around proselytizing about— but you're right, mentioning Shikamaru is unnecessary. Nixed that part.
MadScientist.jpg
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Well, I... am open to alternative framings.
I would recommend not implying, even mentally, that Jashin has physical limits or restrictions, as this may be taboo for Hidan.
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Pretty sure that's untrue:
Paperclipped said:
"Seems like an awful lot of trouble," Hazō said. "He doesn't just tell you what he wants?"

"He doesn't," Hidan said, suddenly dead serious. "If you meet someone claiming to hear the voice of a god in their head, you better kill them even more than usual. They cut out Lord Jashin's tongue. You'll never hear him speak."
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I would suggest entering this state earlier than later, but that's a personal opinion and not a conclusion based on any cost/benefit analysis.
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Agreed, done.
 
[x] Action Plan: Jashin Take the Wheel

This entire situation feels eerily like when 'Mari' told us that the Swamp was fucked and she was leaving, and offering us a way out: I have no way of determining if Hidan is being honest about everything or if he's testing our conviction, and I feel that attempting to convince Hidan, which is what we attempted to do with Mari (failed or no) is the right call here.

Still think we're gonna get ourselves killed, but that's what happens when we poke at the S-rank slaughterhouse.
 
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@Noumero I think the mention of targetting bandits instead could be better placed to suit the argument regarding the preservation of civilization.
 
_The_Bomb said:
Could you do this instead?
  • Show Hidan our conviction (Jashin's greatest virtue)
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I think that focusing on "showing" our conviction, instead of just having conviction, is the wrong tack to take. True conviction doesn't care about whether it's showing to Hidan or not, true conviction is not invoked instrumentally, it doesn't care what the consequences of itself will be, true conviction just is.

This reminds me of...
Velorien said:
Jiraiya raised an eyebrow. "You think you could resist the aura of a Kage?"

"Eventually! Right now, I'm just suggesting seeing how far I can get, and then practising until I get better."

"You won't get anywhere, I can tell you that now. Apart from the fact that you're trying to face off against an incredible badass who makes ordinary jōnin quake in their boots, you just don't have the right kind of resolve. Mari told me about how she rescued you from Shikigami's camp. It was brave of you to run headfirst into the unknown, but when it comes down to it, you ran because there was no other choice. I think a lot of your missing-nin adventures were like that. Heck, I'm the one who forced you into half of them. You made choices based on what increased your odds of survival. Which was smart, sensible, and absolutely the right thing for a missing-nin to do, but the resolve you get from that? It's a survivor's resolve. You stare into the eyes of danger and go 'I've faced worse than you and survived.'

"You can't beat me with survivor's resolve. Somewhere in the back of your mind there'll be a voice going 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya and here is why', and another voice going 'I'm weaker than Jiraiya but I have to beat him anyway in order to survive.' Neither of those voices will give you what you need."

He didn't get Hazō at all. Or rather, he got how Hazō dealt with his enemies, but that didn't tell Jiraiya anything about where Hazō's resolve came from.

"That's not it at all!" Hazō exclaimed in frustration.

"Sorry," he said in a more subdued voice after registering Jiraiya's expression. "That came out more rudely than I expected. But I don't get my resolve from being a survivor. I get it from living in the name of the things I believe in. I have a vision of a better world, a world I intend to create, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to turn that vision into reality. I know that it isn't going to be an easy path. I know that the world is a ravenous, unfeeling abyss, and that the darkness within it is going to devour all of us unless somebody stops it. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But precisely because the world needs saving, I am going to become strong enough to save it. It doesn't matter what I face—unsolvable problems, unbeatable enemies, even human nature itself—I will overcome them because I have to. That's my resolve, and that's what I want to use to learn to stand up to a jōnin aura, step by step."

"Wrong answer."

It was like being hit with an uppercut out of nowhere.

"What?!"

"Better, I'll grant you," Jiraiya said with an approving nod. "That could get you a long way under the right circumstances, at least if you can walk the walk. But this time, one little voice is going 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya because I want to be' and another is going 'I'm weaker than Jiraiya but I have to beat him anyway for the greater good'. That's not good enough either."

Not enough? How could it be not enough? Setting aside the fact that Jiraiya was unbeatable as things stood, that was Hazō's own self, the thing that would eventually become his core as a jōnin. It would be one thing if Jiraiya had said it wasn't strong enough, or even if he'd said that Hazō wasn't putting enough of himself into those words. Hazō knew that right now that resolve was more a statement of intent than anything else. But to imply that it was wrong on a fundamental level?

"It's not that belief can't work to give you strong enough resolve. But it takes purity of focus. It takes a kind of fanaticism that you don't have. Look at Zabuza. Zabuza dedicated every waking moment of his life to being a hunter-nin, whether he had to or not. On top of making him the ultimate master of his craft, it also gave him an identity that couldn't break under pressure. He had no voices in the back of his head, and I doubt I could have made him submit if I wanted to.

"There are others out there. I once knew a man who'd dedicated himself to the protection of Leaf to the point where nothing else existed for him. If you could be used to protect Leaf, he would use you. If you were a threat to Leaf, he would remove you. That was the sum total of his world. He wasn't even a Kage, but his aura could floor jōnin too.

"Assuming you aren't a paragon like those two, the resolve you need to beat a jōnin is the same resolve you need to become a jōnin. You have just one voice, and what it says is 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya.' No explanations. No justifications. No objectives. You're not even trying to win. You're not even focusing your resolve in response to my aura. You just are, and there happens to be a jōnin aura in your general vicinity."

"I just… am?"

"That's right. 'I'm stronger than Jiraiya.' Go a little deeper, a little further towards the core, and all you see is 'I'm stronger.' Get as close to the core as words will get you, and all you see is 'I am.' Nobody gets to argue with that.

"I'm not saying I won't give you a fair shot, once we're back in Leaf and I can do it without freaking out everybody in a one-mile area. Just don't expect miracles."
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