Ah, thanks for the correction. that is more time/effort than I expected. I am hesitant to spend more than one sealaster-working-day on making seals for free
No actually, your guess of half a day is good. Hazou gets like 57 clone-hours per day. We could deadass do this in one day. No one else could, but this is something Hazou can just do. Doesn't mean the value of his labor is different (okay maybe it does, but we ain't admitting that).
Explosives and storage seals aren't clan-exclusive. Which is what I meant by "giving away for free" TN 60 GBs are like at least 1 OOM better than an explosive seal. Probably more like 2. But really it's a qualitative difference that's hard to describe.
IMO we basically have a fiduciary duty to invest in our ninja and get them the tools to LIVE in this hell-world. That means not giving stuff away for free in the futile hope people will see what we're doing and share. They made the sacrifice of considerable personal autonomy to join the clan. They should get their money's worth, so to speak.
Quibbles aside, your point of "this proposal is more expensive than you assumed, and giving that way for free is unreasonable" is received. I've been convinced, unless we learn that Yamanaka Genin can be reasonably well armed with < 100 seals
Oh they probably can. 20 genin at the most, 5 seals each. It's probably sufficient. Team Uplift only used maybe 10 Goo Bombs in the entire Chunin Exams. That was a target-rich environment.
5 is enough for them to have enough for any single tough combat while discouraging frivolous use.
I believe the QMs have stated that we are swiftly reaching the point of diminishing returns on the willingness of Leaf ninja to take Till'n'Fills, it's just not something they like doing. Ninja culture be toxic, yo.
because for some reason we promised to do so 'modulo some conditions' several years ago and there would likely be massive irreparable consequences to renege on that (which some people may be fine with, which is valid. She would probably become more enemy than ally though, and imo she's an ally 90% of the time, and maybe the best non-Uplift ally.) The only reason she isn't asking to be let in right this moment is cuz she hasn't been able to get shadow clone yet. We likely should still brainstorm a response for the inevitable end-of-chapter "okay time to pay up" scene
It's not all bad though.
- "Modulo some conditions" gives us a bit of flexibility out of what we expect from her before she fully gets let in. The general consensus seems to be some sort of "You have to accept that you view us as family, you can't be pulling headass shenanigans on the gang" type thing which can be done a few different ways.
- Getting her in on things does mean we have another strong (mostly) ideologically aligned resource to draw on. Having an extra jonin to track down summon scrolls for example would be pretty handy.
- She has to travel so much for her job as an international diplomat that she wouldn't benefit nearly as much from FOOM as we do anyways.
- Once she knows the full details of it, she's better able to help keep it secret (and she does want it secret if for no other reason than to make Kei more powerful relative to everyone else.)
because for some reason we promised to do so 'modulo some conditions' several years ago and there would likely be massive irreparable consequences to renege on that
Expanding on this a bit, more recently during our A-Day plotting Ami and Hazou had that chat about life debts, and Hazou's internal monologue made a point about how, if he did believe in life debts, he would certainly owe one to Ami and thus certainly not be able to wriggle out of an important favour like sharing FOOM. After some deliberation, Hazou agreed that he does believe in life debts, as it seemed instrumentally useful to believe in them for our necromancy plans (Pein was the main topic but it's easy to see how the concept generalizes. We'll be in a position to extract massive favours from anyone we rez who believes in life debts, because it is never more clear that you owe your life to someone when they literally raised you from the dead).
I don't imagine for a second that either Ami or Hazou were unaware of how that conversation affects the topic of FOOM, so given Hazou's response in that conversation I expect both Ami and Hazou to believe that Hazou's willingness to share FOOM with her has only been reaffirmed. When the day comes and she finally gets Shadow Clone, she'll be able to call in the life debt that Hazou already stated he respects. No amount of talking will get us out of that, and the only way that scene ends without sharing FOOM is if we outright refuse despite acknowledging our prior commitments on the matter, leading to the massive irreparable consequences you mentioned.
I still can't remember why we're in this mess to begin with, tbh. I think we wanted to hint at it but made the absolute chump move of underestimating a Mori's deductive ability and then we were stuck. At least she still doesn't know the true nature of it, since "Jiraiya's inheritance" is genuinely more plausible as a theory than "Hazou got his hands on Shadow Clone for three seconds and immediately figured out how to break it in a way that the rest of Konoha never did". As long as she's barking up the wrong tree, we still have some leverage.
(Also, I have a little dream of setting the stage for the FOOM reveal with a fakeout first. We have all of our FOOMers wear a youthsuit perfectly concealed under their ninja clothes, and then we pull up our sleeves one by one and tell Ami we found an undocumented interaction between youthsuit fibers and Shadow Clone. Despite being ridiculous, it bears mentioning that youthsuits are an alien invention imported to our world and that we would have means to discover this ourselves as Akane was both a Shadow Clone user and youthsuit aficionado. If we play our cards right we might get Ami to seriously entertain the idea for a moment before we tell her that it's all nonsense, which would set a good lighthearted tone for the rest of the scene.)
After some deliberation, Hazou agreed that he does believe in life debts, as it seemed instrumentally useful to believe in them for our necromancy plans (Pein was the main topic but it's easy to see how the concept generalizes. We'll be in a position to extract massive favours from anyone we rez who believes in life debts, because it is never more clear that you owe your life to someone when they literally raised you from the dead).
I don't think that's right. The relevant chapter doesn't mention this reasoning, and it doesn't seem valid to me either. What impact does Hazou's disposition towards life debts have on the resurrectees' dispositions towards life debts? It's not like Pain's mind is a function of Hazou's such that Pain will believe in life debts iff Hazou does. Okay, I guess it might be — Pain might be the sort of person who only accepts a life debt to someone if that someone would have considered themselves owing a life debt to Pain if their positions were reversed. But that's pretty weird, I don't really see a reason to assume this by default.
In particular, there's no solid decision-theoretic basis for tit-for-tating on this. You want your mind to be shaped such that you'd predictably repay people for going out of their way to save you from death. This will ensure that even people who don't care about you (i. e., who'd just as well watch you die) would instantly leap to your defense with no prior agreements (which there may not be an opportunity to reach in e. g. time-sensitive or communication-limited situations) as long as the amount of resources they spend saving you is less than the amount of resources you'd be able-and-willing to give them in return. But that deal is one-way: making this standing offer open only to agents who have the exact same standing offer just limits the pool of your potential rescuers; which just makes it more likely you'd die/stay dead.
Recognizing life debts to people who themselves don't recognize life debts to others doesn't disadvantage you, so there's no reason not to do that. (I guess unless you're operating under some weird principle like "dishonourable people are yucky, I'd rather die than be rescued by them", but that's silly.)
Did Hazō believe in life debts? He hadn't really had cause to think about it. Everyone in Team Uplift had saved each other's lives so many times they'd never bothered keeping count. Saving lives was just what you did. It was one of the pillars of Uplift, and the whole rift business was as clear an expression of it as you could get. What was he supposed to—
Oh.
Well, this was awkward.
By any reasonable definition, Hazō owed Ami a life debt. She had taken action, at cost to herself, to prevent him from being executed by Asuma.
There were arguments against that Hazō could muster. Maybe Asuma never intended to kill him and was just making a point. Maybe Kei could have rallied the KEI to his rescue even without Ami's influence. Maybe Asuma would have folded even if she hadn't. Maybe it didn't count because Ami had no choice but to do it for Kei's sake, or to benefit herself somehow. Maybe ninja from the same village couldn't owe each other life debts, or it would happen every other mission (though, then again, Ami wasn't a Leaf ninja at the time). He didn't find any of them terribly convincing, and more to the point, he doubted Ami would either.
If Hazō said yes here, he'd be admitting a life debt to Ami. He had a pretty strong inkling what she'd call it in for if she had to, and that would make his life considerably harder when it came to the final negotiations. On the other hand, if he rejected the life debt, not only would he be acting dishonourably (arguably in his own eyes, but certainly in those of Ami, Kei, and potentially a lot of Leaf), but he strongly suspected it would tank their amiable cooperation there and then, after he'd told her everything about the rift research and after they'd established that the stakes were high enough that he needed her help.
More impactfully, if he could foresee that a life debt was potential leverage for getting WHOOSH, then Ami could foresee that he'd foresee it and that he'd be tempted to reject it on those pragmatic grounds. A transparent "I reject the debt I owe you so that I can demand that you place yourself in my debt instead" went beyond the transactional and into the mercenary. It wasn't something you did to a business partner you wanted to keep, much less someone you wanted to one day see you as family.
I still can't remember why we're in this mess to begin with, tbh. I think we wanted to hint at it but made the absolute chump move of underestimating a Mori's deductive ability and then we were stuck
Yes, and this chain of events was started by Kei pleading with Hazou to share FOOM with Ami. And we'd responded amicably and took a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards informing her, because we'd been operating under the assumption that something like "wait 1.5 years before starting to FOOM, we'd get to Deceit ~60 by then and that'd let us trust you" would be part of whatever final deal we strike. Or, even more conveniently, that it'd take her on the order of 1-2 years to repatriate to Leaf and get her hands on SC, so this condition gets fulfilled by default...
(Also I never underestimated Ami, why, I called even Kei figuring FOOM out from minimal information, but nobody listened to me about that either, nobody ever listens and then state agents steal our WMDs and commit genocide using them and disappear our clanmates and forbid the lore and other manipulators which we can't vet throw tantrums and try to kill our pet sociopaths and then turn around and demand we empower them and psychotic murderers show up with crazy ideas and Hazou sucks at manipulating them so we have to invent contrived self-manipulation setups to bounce them in the vaguely right direction but it's not clever enough it's never clever enough and so the social fabric unravels at the seams and Moloch's spawn pours into the world and wipes out settlements and kills our loved ones and it's all our fault it will always be our fault.)
because for some reason we promised to do so 'modulo some conditions' several years ago and there would likely be massive irreparable consequences to renege on that [..] We likely should still brainstorm a response for the inevitable end-of-chapter "okay time to pay up" scene
It's not all bad though.
- "Modulo some conditions" gives us a bit of flexibility out of what we expect from her before she fully gets let in. The general consensus seems to be some sort of "You have to accept that you view us as family, you can't be pulling headass shenanigans on the gang" type thing which can be done a few different ways.
[...]No amount of talking will get us out of that, and the only way that scene ends without sharing FOOM is if we outright refuse despite acknowledging our prior commitments on the matter, leading to the massive irreparable consequences you mentioned.
I still can't remember why we're in this mess to begin with, tbh. I think we wanted to hint at it but made the absolute chump move of underestimating a Mori's deductive ability and then we were stuck. [..]
(Also, I have a little dream of setting the stage for the FOOM reveal with a fakeout first. We have all of our FOOMers wear a youthsuit perfectly concealed under their ninja clothes, and then we pull up our sleeves one by one and tell Ami we found an undocumented interaction between youthsuit fibers and Shadow Clone.
Oh. Oh yeah. F.
Well, the catastrophe might not hit us too hard if Ami truly does believe us to be family. My insecurities/concerns/exasperation views concerning Amy have considerably softened recently, so I'm hoping that can be achieved. Still, I am highly skeptical of arguments that do not reflect Ami's impossible competence. She is an HP:MOR-Voldemort-turned-to-Chaos in the making, so if she 'seems too busy to practice efficaciously FOOM' then I have no doubt she'll make it work. Somehow.
I wish we could make sure Asuma doesn't give Ami SC at all, and stall her indefinitely (though at some point I expect she'll still get it, through politics probably).
Oh. Oh yeah. F.
Well, the catastrophe might not hit us too hard if Ami truly does believe us to be family. My insecurities/concerns/exasperation views concerning Amy have considerably softened recently, so I'm hoping that can be achieved. Still, I am highly skeptical of arguments that do not reflect Ami's impossible competence. She is an HP:MOR-Voldemort-turned-to-Chaos in the making, so if she 'seems too busy to practice efficaciously FOOM' then I have no doubt she'll make it work. Somehow.
The good news is since FOOM takes a really long time to ramp up. Even if Ami gets FOOM today she won't be able to pass up Mari. That means if Ami ever goes super super rogue we can just have Mari take care of her for us
Was this an actual sentiment expressed by members of the thread? Because it is pants-on-head dumb. We won't have Deceit 60 a year and a half from now. 60 stats do not grow on trees.
Was this an actual sentiment expressed by members of the thread? Because it is pants-on-head dumb. We won't have Deceit 60 a year and a half from now. 60 stats do not grow on trees.
Earthshaping was 0 one-and-a-half years ago and it's 50 now. Not accounting for columns, we can raise it to 60 with 555 more XP.
Deceit was 24 one-and-a-half years ago, which means we had 300 XP invested in it. If we'd invested in it instead of Earthshaping, we would've needed only 255 more XP to reach Deceit 60. Which is something like 21 days away, with Hazou's current SC bonuses?
So I dunno what you're basing this claim on. On the contrary, I'm kind of proud of how precisely my past self's calculations seem to have held up.
"Are you sure this is the right way?" Yuno asked as they jogged through the northern forest, the air still crisp after a bout of inconveniently-timed rain.
"Fairly confident," Hazō said. "Here, let me show you."
He stopped, and Yuno followed suit. He was lucky enough to find a suitably brush-shaped stick and some sufficiently dried mud after only a minute—the Iron Nerve wasn't completely rigid, but it definitely emphasised fidelity over flexibility, and he thanked the Sage that he'd thought to trace the map with a calligraphy brush rather than his finger.
"This is the region we're in," Hazō said as his hand moved without any particular input from him. "Masatsumura–or was it Massatsumura?–is over here somewhere, and we'll be able to find it by following the river. Zansatsu is closer, but it's by a small lake, and that'll be harder to find just by criss-crossing the terrain. Finally, Tanima would be the easiest to locate, but according to the tax collector, it was the first village to go dark, and nobody bothered reporting it to Leaf until Zansatsu and Masatsumura followed and they realised they could be facing an escalation. Any trail is bound to be stone cold by now."
Yuno nodded.
"Besides," Hazō added, "you said there's not much by way of dangerous chakra beasts around here thanks to whatever's started disrupting their migration patterns, so we can take this time to relax a little and chat."
He hesitated, then gathered his nerve.
"Listen, Yuno," he said as they began to move again, "I'm sorry for lashing out when we were talking about Jashin before. It was a very stressful day, and dealing with Hidan left me all Jashined out. I know to you he's a figure to venerate, but to me it's more instinctive to treat Jashin as an ally, so maybe I don't automatically remember that Jashinism is a religion that deserves the same kind of respect as any other. Your beliefs are important to me and I don't mean to dismiss them."
Yuno gave a warm smile. "Thank you, Hazō. Satsuko and I were worried. It happens all the time, this thing where I share my feelings and people freak out and then won't tell me why. Even Kichi got uncomfortable when I tried to talk about my relationship with Isan, and he was very relaxed about ending people's lives. You know, he'd have made a good Jashin cultist if he'd survived the war. I bet there are other people like him who still would."
Kichi… Kichi… was that someone Hazō was supposed to know? He and Yuno didn't really move in the same circles, insofar as Yuno had circles.
Actually, that narrowed it down considerably.
"Was he the Final Gift Programme guy at your coming-of-age ceremony?"
"That's right," Yuno said. "It was really sad. Right before he died, he was boasting how Ami said she thought he was ready for a higher position in the FGP, and she was even willing to pull some strings to fix his reputation with the rank-and-file by getting him onto one of those deep raiding squads that are really only meant for ANBU and jōnin candidates. I hope he got to massacre lots of enemy civilians like he wanted before he died."
Huh.
"Speaking of massacring civilians"–Hazō said some words he never expected or wanted to say in his life–"I know that's the part of Jashin's creed that Hidan's keenest on preaching, but I also don't think it's something we, as in you and I specifically, want to focus on too much."
"What do you mean?"
"Well," Hazō said, "you remember what I told you about Hidan moonlighting as the Oracle on O'Uzu?"
"I do," Yuno said. "I have to admit, I'm really not sure what to make of that now I've met him and heard what he has to say."
"The point," Hazō said, "is that Jashin has two aspects–Death and Birth. The human population has to grow and flourish so there are more people, and then you can sacrifice those people to Jashin without the risk of running out. If humanity goes extinct, that means no more sacrifices, right?"
"Sure," Yuno said, "but it's not like that's ever going to happen."
"It's not," Hazō agreed, keeping the fierce determination out of his voice because that wasn't what this conversation was about. "But it's a realistic threat. A lot of very smart people, including Kei, think humanity is on the decline. Today, it's a few civilian villages. Tomorrow, it could be everyone, because if Death and Birth get too far out of balance, the same thing happens as when anything gets too far out of balance. I think you must know better than most people what happens, say, when there aren't enough predators to hunt prey, or when there are too many."
"Mass starvation," Yuno said. "Too many predators kill too much prey, and then they starve because the prey can't breed fast enough to maintain the food source. Not enough predators, and the prey breed too much and run out of their food source, and the same thing happens. If that food source is important for other things, it can ripple out and do terrible damage to the entire habitat. Everyone in Isan is taught about not exterminating too many predators and not over-hunting any one prey species, because it wasn't like we could just move if things went wrong."
"Exactly!" Hazō exclaimed delightedly. "That's the perfect analogy. Right now, too many prey animals, which is to say civilians, are dying, and the world's heading in the direction where they get wiped out and then the predators, which is to say ninja, end up starving to death." Actually, that analogy got more disturbing the more he thought about it. "That's doubly true for Jashin, because ninja just need enough civilians to feed them, whereas Jashin needs enough civilians to feed his cultists–who are also ninja–and to be regularly sacrificed.
"I've been working to prevent that doomsday scenario ever since I was a missing-nin, long before I first heard of Jashin at the Chūnin Exams. Then, when I had a chance to talk to Hidan about Jashin at O'Uzu, he approved of Uplift as Jashin's high priest, and to prove the point, Jashin kept favouring me. I never told you about Bakuchioka, but there was this time when Hidan forced me to gamble for a village's worth of lives, and I had such incredible luck keeping people alive that it could only be Jashin's favour. In other words, Jashin agreed with me that people should live–not everyone, in the event, but definitely a majority."
"So you're saying," Yuno reasoned, "that Lord Jashin wants people to be sacrificed, but not so many that it tips the balance. But the Great Prophet never said anything about that."
"Because it's not his role," Hazō agreed. "He's in charge of Death. At O'Uzu, he was doing Birth as well, but he admitted himself that he wasn't that good at it compared to all the killing. Right now, there's too much Death and not enough Birth. I recognised that without Jashin's help, and I have a solid plan for fixing it–and between Bakuchioka and other things, it's clear Jashin approves. He wants me to take over Birth. Will you help me with that?"
The silence stretched a while, long enough for Yuno to notice the tracks of a greater needlemouse and make sure they gave it a wide berth.
"I'm very flattered you'd see me that way, Hazō," Yuno said carefully, "but I only want one man to father my children, and it's Noburi, the second he's old enough for the Perpendicular Anointment Ceremony and I figure out how to get the Isanese priests to brew me the Nectar of Joy."
"I, uh, didn't mean it that way," Hazō stammered.
"Good." Yuno relaxed. "Besides, now I think of it, our children are going to be brought up in Lord Jashin's faith, so they'll be doing even more sacrificing, and you're saying that's not Birth material. I think maybe I should follow the Great Prophet's orthodox teachings and stick to Death."
"I meant," Hazō said, "that as a fellow cultist of Birth, you could help me kill those who threaten innocent lives, improve quality of life for as many people as possible, and generally make the world a place into which people want to bring more children and in which those children are guaranteed to survive and flourish. That'll reverse the decline and make sure Birth and Death are in balance."
"I see," Yuno said after a second. "So you want me to help you get the human population to a stable level."
"Right."
"Then we figure out the replacement rate and sacrifice everyone who isn't needed to maintain it, and that way Lord Jashin gets the greatest possible number of births and deaths, and we don't risk any of the problems of overpopulation or decline. Hazō, that's brilliant! Of course I'll help."
Wait, what?
"We'll have to get Kei and Snowflake to figure out how many people we need," Yuno said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't know where to start figuring that out–especially when you account for things like plagues, where the more people there are, the more likely somebody is to offend the disease spirits so they punish on the whole community. Also, we'll need to make sure Lord Jashin's cult takes over the world early on, because we don't want to end up in a situation where the non-Jashinist ninja population grows very fast and we end up facing a big ninja force that disagrees with how we do things. You know, suddenly a lot of the things you've been doing make much more sense."
"Nonono," Hazō hastened to correct her. "We want the human population to keep going up. If there's a line we don't want to cross, that's going to be many generations away. Until then, we should be doing everything we can to reverse the decline."
Yuno shook her head. "We have to start laying the foundations now, just like Akio and the Companions made sure the rules and rituals of Isan were laid down correctly from the very first day. Otherwise, by the time we get to that line–assuming it really is generations away–you'll be dead, and all the people who haven't accepted Lord Jashin's truth into their hearts are going to refuse to be massacred for the sake of the future. You have to make sacrifices to Lord Jashin part of the fabric of society now, so nobody thinks to question them when the time comes for mass sacrifice, just like Akio made the rules about being cruel to the unclean, so when I was growing up, nobody thought to question them even though I almost never did anything wrong."
"People aren't going to accept that," Hazō said. "Uplift can only happen if everyone accepts that it's a universal good. As soon as we give them reason to think some of them are going to be murdered, they're going to fight to preserve the current, broken ways."
"Then make them," Yuno said without any particular emotion. "Nobody outside the cult accepts being sacrificed either, so you sacrifice them through force because it's what's right. Lord Jashin is already guiding you in that direction. It's why all the seals you invent for the sake of Uplift are seals for killing people, not seals for, I don't know, making the soil more fertile or making women more fertile. It's why he gave you Mari, who hurts people for you without ever telling you, instead of Ami, who ends wars by persuading people to be nice to each other. It's why he sent the Great Prophet to teach you about murder instead of leaving you alone to carry on with the Uplift you were already working on.
"The more I talk to you about this, the more it makes sense," Yuno said with a trace of exaltation in her voice. "Everything I went through in Isan… maybe it was for this moment. Isan is defined by tradition, and my life was defined by tradition, and that's why I know that tradition is the most powerful force in the world if you can shape it, and a wall that you can't break down by being nice to people or using arguments that make sense or giving them things they ought to want. This is how I help you–not just by killing people who need killing, but by making sense of my life in Isan and teaching you how to use the same power, but in Lord Jashin's name."
Hazō fell silent. He didn't know where to start with that. He just didn't. Hazō had never really had to face religion in his life, either on its own terms or lurking in the hearts of those around him. He acknowledged the ancestors' influence, but it was very much in the background of his life. Thanks to Mum, he'd somehow managed to get by without being too indoctrinated by Yagura's teachings, and then his experiences outside Mist had been more than enough to shrug off what was left. He mostly just pretended the Will of Fire didn't exist when he wasn't busy using it to support his arguments or doing the minimum necessary to appease the Leaf ninja around him. And even now, he was paying the price for exploiting and then ignoring the Spirit of Youth. Would Akane still be alive if he'd engaged deeply with her beliefs from the start, and found a way forward for her that didn't eventually lead off a cliff?
"I see a wall ahead," Yuno suddenly announced. Hazō set his trail of thought aside in favour of the trails of chakra beasts.
The village of Masatsumura was silent as the grave, which was grimly ironic since none of the inhabitants had got one. The tax collectors who discovered the massacre must have looked around and then simply gone away, not bothering to collect the bodies or even do them the basic honour of a funeral pyre that would bear away the souls of the worthy to rejoin the Will of Fire and protect even the unworthy from desecration. Convenient, for an investigator needing to know what killed them, but also a cold reminder that civilians could hold each other in just as much contempt as the ninja held them.
"Scavengers," Yuno concluded after studying several of the bodies, which lay scattered in a haphazard fashion across the village territory: most alone, but some in twos and threes, all torn apart by what Yuno now told him were lesser chakra beasts hungry for dead flesh. Little remained but bones with scraps of flesh hanging off them. It was next to impossible to tell the damage inflicted before death from damage after.
"They must have tried to defend themselves," Hazō observed. "Many of these bodies have makeshift weapons next to them–rakes, clubs, even chairs for those inside the buildings. It wasn't a sudden attack; the sentries on the walls must have had time to raise the alarm."
"But the gates were open," Yuno said. "It was sudden enough that nobody had time to close them, even though it should have been easy to spot a chakra beast or a group of chakra beasts big enough to wipe out an entire village."
"Burrowers?" Hazō suggested. "Or fliers?"
"No burrowing chakra beasts in this area," Yuno said. "I've been following the reports, and those don't seem to have been affected by the disruption to the migration patterns. It could be fliers, but then everyone would have rushed indoors and there are so many people outside."
"You're right," Hazō confirmed after a cursory search of the buildings. "Some of those people were killed indoors, but the majority are outside, carrying cooking knives and rolling pins and other things they could only have got if they were coming out from their homes."
Masatsumura was beginning to look increasingly like a dead end. There were plenty of trails to follow, but no way of telling the scavenger trails apart from that of the chakra beast responsible. Plenty of damage to the bodies, but no way of identifying the nature of the killing blow.
"Hazō," Yuno said from near the wall, her voice trembling, "what is going on here?"
"What is it, Yuno?"
Hazō came over.
"Sage's ballsack," he spat.
Several of the bodies had arrows sticking out of them. Not just one, as of an archer firing into melee and accidentally hitting a friend. Several. More littered the ground nearby, some piercing it at acute angles.
"Those must be the archers," he said, pointing to two bodies bearing empty quivers. They were too far from the wall to have been knocked off it. "But why would they shoot their own people? Why use up all their arrows and then climb down? That doesn't make sense if there were chakra beasts on the ground and the wall was the safest place, and if they were in the air, then you'd climb down first and get to cover."
Yuno stared at the bodies. "Hazō, what if we've got it all wrong? What if they weren't all slaughtered by chakra beasts?"
"But then…" Hazō said, "what could have done this to an entire village?
"Wait, do you hear the sound of wings?"
Alertness: Yuno (??), Flying chakra beast (??), Hazō (29)
Round 1
Yuno
Supplemental: Retrieve earplugs
Standard Manoeuvre: Insert earplugs
Yuno creates the Personal Aspect "Hear No Evil" and gets a tag on it. She also receives a penalty to Alertness.
Supplemental: Draw air dome seals
Flying chakra beast
???: ??? + ? = ?
Yuno tags "Hear No Evil".
Yuno: Resolve ?? + ? + ?= ??
Yuno resists.
Hazō: Resolve 54 + 6 = 60
Hazō resists.
Hazō
Hazō sees Yuno prepare the air dome seals, but disagrees with her tactical decision.
Full-Round: Insert and activate skywalkers.
Round 2
Yuno
Yuno mutters something under her breath on seeing Hazō's actions.
Full-Round: Insert and activate skywalkers.
Flying chakra beast
Full-Round: Move
Hazō
Hazō uses chakra boost every round from this point.
Full-Round: Move
The combat turns into a chase sequence. Each victory either closes or expands the gap between the flying chakra beast and the ninja. Three successes put it in attack range. Three failures drop the ninja too far behind to follow.
Flying chakra beast: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Hazō: Athletics 34 + 4 + 0 = 38
Yuno: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Yuno: 1 success
Hazō: 1 failure
Flying chakra beast: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Hazō: Athletics 34 + 4 - 6 = 32
Yuno: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Yuno: 2 success
Hazō: 2 failure
Flying chakra beast: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Yuno Athletics ??+ ? = ??
Hazō: Athletics 34 + 4 + 0 = 38
Yuno: 3 success
Hazō: 3 failure
Combat ends for Hazō.
The last thing Hazō saw was Yuno thrusting her hand into her belt pouch. Then everything went blank.
After a second of disorientation, he heard the voice in his mind, explaining everything, leaving no room for doubt. It was Yuno. Yuno was the real threat here. She stood in the way of everything he wanted. She was going to kill him, yes, kill him the very next instant. He could already see her pulling something out, surely a deadly weapon with which she'd strike him down if he didn't strike first. He had to strike first. She needed to die.
Hazō nearly laughed as the insidious message of hatred and murder attempted to wind its way into the crevices of his mind… and met a rock-hard wall built over subjective months of focused meditation. There was no room for malign influence, no room for anything but Hazō himself within the fortress of his will. The chakra beast's scrabbling against that wall was so ineffectual it might as well have attempted to seduce him by dressing up as Lord Hagoromo. Its insistent whispers turned into the dying echoes of an ugly croak as Hazō looked up and beheld his foe.
The birdlike creature was perhaps twice the size of an albatross, with a long, wickedly-hooked beak, its grey feathers interrupted only on its shining, pearlescent neck, and its breast, marked by a golden circle. It stared down at him, and though Hazō had no experience in reading possibly-avian body language, he was sure its beady eyes were filled with confusion and disbelief.
"A discord pigeon," Yuno said, somewhat louder than was necessary. "They're supposed to be very rare." She reached for her pouch again, this time pulling out a pair of air dome seals.
Hazō could see what she was thinking. It was the tactic Noburi had employed against the assassin the day Minami died. Air domes cut off air. They cut off sound. An air dome would keep the chakra beast's hypnotic croak at bay long enough for them to strategise and prepare. It wasn't the move Hazō would have expected from someone like Yuno, but then again, she was a veteran chakra beast hunter, and he already knew Isan's vicinity featured mind-influencing chakra beasts.
However, Hazō had a different idea. Without Kei or Snowflake, they were woefully under-equipped to take on a flying enemy. While they could try their luck with an explosive tag, their throwing skills were sadly lacking, especially vertically upwards. A single miss, or even a minor hit, would be enough to scare off any halfway sensible bird… and this thing needed to die here and now. It couldn't be allowed to do this to another village.
Instead, Hazō reached for the skywalker inserts he'd been forced to take off before they were ruined by the mud. After a second's glare, Yuno dropped the seals and followed his example.
Unfortunately, the discord pigeon had taken those few seconds to decide that discretion was the better part of valour anyway. Hazō and Yuno gave chase, this time ready to unleash the full weight of their arsenals the second they were in range. As a ninja, there was little more honourable than stabbing an enemy in the back.
They gave chase… and gave chase… and gave chase. Bit by bit, Yuno and the discord pigeon receded into the distance as Hazō's legs turned into lead weights and his lungs tried to tear themselves out of his chest in protest at unacceptable working conditions. Finally, he was forced to admit defeat and leave the hunting to the professional.
Instead, he did something else that needed to be done. There was a limit to how many bodies a single Hazō could drag into a funeral pyre in a few hours, especially as the cold began to numb his fingers, but he wasn't the kind of man who could sit around and relax amidst a pile of corpses he hadn't made (and, in a second grim irony, the mostly-eaten state of the bodies meant they were very light and conveniently portable for funerary purposes).
-o-
"I found a new colour!"
Hazō turned around from the roughly-carved bench he'd been sitting on to see Yuno, covered in green liquid and grinning in a tired but still rather maniacal fashion.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The blood," Yuno explained. "I thought at first it was lime, but it's not. It's a kind of greenish-yellow I haven't seen before. I'm going to have to go find a dye seller and ask them what it's called. Do you know how exciting that is?"
Hazō decided not to press the matter further.
"I take it you killed the discord pigeon?"
"Sure did," Yuno said. "At first, I was going to butcher it there and then, but then I realised it would be better to let it lead me to its nest, so I dropped back a little and stalked it, and I was right! There were three whole chicks to kill. Also, there were human remains. Three people, all really big and well-muscled, without much by way of injuries except for the bits the chicks were eating and the talon swipes across the throat. I decided to leave them as they were."
"Huh," Hazō said for lack of anything else he could possibly say.
With that, they headed back.
"Say, Yuno," Hazō said eventually, deciding he'd rather talk about disturbing things he was at least familiar with than dwell on friends and families being forced to kill each other by a monster against which they had no defence. "You said you didn't know about Jashin before, but wasn't his symbol there at your wedding?"
"It was," Yuno said, "but I only knew it as one of the symbols of the Old Gods that you need to use in various rituals. If you want to know about it, you should ask the Inoue. As loremasters, it's their duty to know the stories of the Old Gods and what they are and where they went and what to do if it ever seems like they're coming back. Ordinary people like me don't need esoteric knowledge like that, and besides, obviously the lore is wrong–the Old Gods are supposed to be something to fear, but Lord Jashin is what I've been looking for all my life without knowing it."
Talk to the loremasters, she said. How would Yuno feel when she learned Isan had been annihilated? Would she be heartbroken? Would she be heartbroken that she didn't get to do it herself? Hazō had no idea how to navigate the complexity of her feelings about Isan. He only knew that, whatever her reaction, he would be the one responsible, and EM OPSEC meant he'd never be able to ask her forgiveness for as long as he lived.
Hazō moved on before his expression gave anything away.
"So you don't know what gods were responsible for Jashin losing his tongue?"
"No," Yuno said. "I didn't even know he'd lost his tongue. I really need to learn more about Lord Jashin. If you find out who they were, let me know so I can kill them in his name."
"What about Jashin making the Sage bleed?"
Yuno's mouth split into a broad smile. "He did?"
"Apparently."
"Sorry, though, I don't know."
"What about the King of Hell?" Hazō tried. "I've heard that title many times now, and given Jashin's the god of Birth and Death and murder and blood and possibly peppermint tea, do you think they could be the same person?"
Yuno considered.
"The Great Prophet said people count as sacrifices, but beasts and summons don't, though maybe that's because summons don't really die when you kill them. So if the population of an entire other Path doesn't count for Lord Jashin, doesn't that mean humans are special to him, and therefore the Human Path is special? That doesn't sound right for somebody whose main job is ruling Hell."
"True," Hazō conceded. "Ugh, why is trying to get reliable lore about anything like trying to beat my head against the wall?"
"Sorry," Yuno said. "It seems like Isan's the only place where people have taken lots of care to preserve ancient lore and don't have rules about keeping everything secret. Maybe that's another thing we can change when we take over the world."
Oh, right. That was another thing that urgently needed taking care of.
"About that," Hazō said. "Leaf isn't ready for Jashinism. I need them to embrace Uplift first, and then that can be my vehicle for preparing them for the full thing. That means publicly supporting Jashinism now is going to be a problem for us politically, and that in turn makes it a problem for Jashin's plans, which include me accomplishing Uplift. With that in mind, can I ask you to keep it secret for now?"
"I guess," Yuno said reluctantly. "But if it's such a problem, why did the Great Prophet tell everybody?"
Hazō sighed. "I don't know. I guess maybe he's not all that aware of the political situation in Leaf, and just how much me being known as a Jashinist would screw me over. Or maybe it's a test–but even if it is, I can only pass that test by serving Jashin while making everyone think I don't, not by admitting it to a hostile Leaf and probably being executed for heresy."
"It seems disloyal," Yuno said disapprovingly. "It would make Lord Jashin happy if everybody went around making sacrifices to him–and, I guess, making children who can be sacrifices to him later. I heard the Great Prophet even said something about a temple to him, and I think that's a great idea."
"When Leaf is ready," Hazō stressed. "Birth needs a different approach from Death, and Jashin's chosen to let me do my job, not have Hidan do it. Yuno, this is important: even if we have some theological disagreements, can I trust you to keep our Jashinism secret and let me serve Jashin the way I, his favoured, believe he wants to be served?"
"But isn't the kraken out of the inkwell already?" Yuno asked. "It's been nearly two days since the Great Prophet revealed your allegiance. Everyone in Leaf must know by now, and you haven't done anything to deny it."
"I left that to Mari."
"Oh," Yuno said. "But isn't that like sending somebody to apologise for you? If you don't do it yourself, it's not going to come across as very sincere. You could maybe get away with that if you were too sick or too busy to leave your home, but you're out here hunting chakra beasts with me."
Hazō sighed. "I'll figure it out. For now, let's deal with one thing at a time. Can I trust you to keep our secret until I judge Leaf is ready?"
Yuno hesitated before answering. "I guess. But this is all to protect us from political problems, right?"
"Right."
"So it's fine if I convert the rest of the family," she concluded. "Maybe not Kagome, because the other day I taught him a secret Isanese charm to keep the hair grease demons away, and within a week it was an Academy playground rhyme, but I certainly have to bring my husband into the cult, and I already told you what I thought about Snowflake, and then I'm sure Kei will join to support her sister-lover-whatever they are. Also, Mari has no problem with torturing and killing people for a higher cause, and I may still be unhappy with her over the whole Orochimaru thing, but I'm not the kind of cultist who'd keep the joy of Lord Jashin from someone just because they did bad things in the past."
Hazō opened his mouth to object.
"Hazō," Yuno said severely, "are you ashamed to be a cultist of Lord Jashin?"
"That's not it. It's just–"
"Do you trust the rest of our family less than you trust me?"
"...No."
"Good," Yuno said. "I finally have a family, Hazō, and I don't want to see us divided. I'll talk to Noburi tonight, once he gets back from the hospital. Now come on, we have to reach the safe zone before it gets dark and the chakra chinchilla swarms erupt."
-o-
You have received 6 + 2 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-Write) = 9 XP.
"It's not," Hazō agreed, keeping the fierce determination out of his voice because that wasn't what this conversation was about. "But it's a realistic threat. A lot of very smart people, including Kei, think humanity is on the decline. Today, it's a few civilian villages. Tomorrow, it could be everyone, because if Death and Birth get too far out of balance, the same thing happens as when anything gets too far out of balance. I think you must know better than most people what happens, say, when there aren't enough predators to hunt prey, or when there are too many."
"Mass starvation," Yuno said. "Too many predators kill too much prey, and then they starve because the prey can't breed fast enough to maintain the food source. Not enough predators, and the prey breed too much and run out of their food source, and the same thing happens. If that food source is important for other things, it can ripple out and do terrible damage to the entire habitat. Everyone in Isan is taught about not exterminating too many predators and not over-hunting any one prey species, because it wasn't like we could just move if things went wrong."
This was my interpretation of the plan, which mentioned disapproving of Hidan, but in no way implied disapproval of Jashin or reluctance to do his Birth-type bidding.
"Are you sure this is the right way?" Yuno asked as they jogged through the northern forest, the air still crisp after a bout of inconveniently-timed rain.
"Fairly confident," Hazō said. "Here, let me show you."
He stopped, and Yuno followed suit. He was lucky enough to find a suitably brush-shaped stick and some sufficiently dried mud after only a minute—the Iron Nerve wasn't completely rigid, but it definitely emphasised fidelity over flexibility, and he thanked the Sage that he'd thought to trace the map with a calligraphy brush rather than his finger.
"This is the region we're in," Hazō said as his hand moved without any particular input from him. "Masatsumura–or was it Massatsumura?–is over here somewhere, and we'll be able to find it by following the river. Zansatsu is closer, but it's by a small lake, and that'll be harder to find just by criss-crossing the terrain. Finally, Tanima would be the easiest to locate, but according to the tax collector, it was the first village to go dark, and nobody bothered reporting it to Leaf until Zansatsu and Masatsumura followed and they realised they could be facing an escalation. Any trail is bound to be stone cold by now."
Yuno nodded.
"Besides," Hazō added, "you said there's not much by way of dangerous chakra beasts around here thanks to whatever's started disrupting their migration patterns, so we can take this time to relax a little and chat."
He hesitated, then gathered his nerve.
"Listen, Yuno," he said as they began to move again, "I'm sorry for lashing out when we were talking about Jashin before. It was a very stressful day, and dealing with Hidan left me all Jashined out. I know to you he's a figure to venerate, but to me it's more instinctive to treat Jashin as an ally, so maybe I don't automatically remember that Jashinism is a religion that deserves the same kind of respect as any other. Your beliefs are important to me and I don't mean to dismiss them."
Yuno gave a warm smile. "Thank you, Hazō. Satsuko and I were worried. It happens all the time, this thing where I share my feelings and people freak out and then won't tell me why. Even Kichi got uncomfortable when I tried to talk about my relationship with Isan, and he was very relaxed about ending people's lives. You know, he'd have made a good Jashin cultist if he'd survived the war. I bet there are other people like him who still would."
Kichi… Kichi… was that someone Hazō was supposed to know? He and Yuno didn't really move in the same circles, insofar as Yuno had circles.
Actually, that narrowed it down considerably.
"Was he the Final Gift Programme guy at your coming-of-age ceremony?"
"That's right," Yuno said. "It was really sad. Right before he died, he was boasting how Ami said she thought he was ready for a higher position in the FGP, and she was even willing to pull some strings to fix his reputation with the rank-and-file by getting him onto one of those deep raiding squads that are really only meant for ANBU and jōnin candidates. I hope he got to massacre lots of enemy civilians like he wanted before he died."
Huh.
"Speaking of massacring civilians"–Hazō said some words he never expected or wanted to say in his life–"I know that's the part of Jashin's creed that Hidan's keenest on preaching, but I also don't think it's something we, as in you and I specifically, want to focus on too much."
"What do you mean?"
"Well," Hazō said, "you remember what I told you about Hidan moonlighting as the Oracle on O'Uzu?"
"I do," Yuno said. "I have to admit, I'm really not sure what to make of that now I've met him and heard what he has to say."
"The point," Hazō said, "is that Jashin has two aspects–Death and Birth. The human population has to grow and flourish so there are more people, and then you can sacrifice those people to Jashin without the risk of running out. If humanity goes extinct, that means no more sacrifices, right?"
"Sure," Yuno said, "but it's not like that's ever going to happen."
"It's not," Hazō agreed, keeping the fierce determination out of his voice because that wasn't what this conversation was about. "But it's a realistic threat. A lot of very smart people, including Kei, think humanity is on the decline. Today, it's a few civilian villages. Tomorrow, it could be everyone, because if Death and Birth get too far out of balance, the same thing happens as when anything gets too far out of balance. I think you must know better than most people what happens, say, when there aren't enough predators to hunt prey, or when there are too many."
"Mass starvation," Yuno said. "Too many predators kill too much prey, and then they starve because the prey can't breed fast enough to maintain the food source. Not enough predators, and the prey breed too much and run out of their food source, and the same thing happens. If that food source is important for other things, it can ripple out and do terrible damage to the entire habitat. Everyone in Isan is taught about not exterminating too many predators and not over-hunting any one prey species, because it wasn't like we could just move if things went wrong."
"Exactly!" Hazō exclaimed delightedly. "That's the perfect analogy. Right now, too many prey animals, which is to say civilians, are dying, and the world's heading in the direction where they get wiped out and then the predators, which is to say ninja, end up starving to death." Actually, that analogy got more disturbing the more he thought about it. "That's doubly true for Jashin, because ninja just need enough civilians to feed them, whereas Jashin needs enough civilians to feed his cultists–who are also ninja–and to be regularly sacrificed.
"I've been working to prevent that doomsday scenario ever since I was a missing-nin, long before I first heard of Jashin at the Chūnin Exams. Then, when I had a chance to talk to Hidan about Jashin at O'Uzu, he approved of Uplift as Jashin's high priest, and to prove the point, Jashin kept favouring me. I never told you about Bakuchioka, but there was this time when Hidan forced me to gamble for a village's worth of lives, and I had such incredible luck keeping people alive that it could only be Jashin's favour. In other words, Jashin agreed with me that people should live–not everyone, in the event, but definitely a majority."
"So you're saying," Yuno reasoned, "that Lord Jashin wants people to be sacrificed, but not so many that it tips the balance. But the Great Prophet never said anything about that."
"Because it's not his role," Hazō agreed. "He's in charge of Death. At O'Uzu, he was doing Birth as well, but he admitted himself that he wasn't that good at it compared to all the killing. Right now, there's too much Death and not enough Birth. I recognised that without Jashin's help, and I have a solid plan for fixing it–and between Bakuchioka and other things, it's clear Jashin approves. He wants me to take over Birth. Will you help me with that?"
The silence stretched a while, long enough for Yuno to notice the tracks of a greater needlemouse and make sure they gave it a wide berth.
"I'm very flattered you'd see me that way, Hazō," Yuno said carefully, "but I only want one man to father my children, and it's Noburi, the second he's old enough for the Perpendicular Anointment Ceremony and I figure out how to get the Isanese priests to brew me the Nectar of Joy."
"I, uh, didn't mean it that way," Hazō stammered.
"Good." Yuno relaxed. "Besides, now I think of it, our children are going to be brought up in Lord Jashin's faith, so they'll be doing even more sacrificing, and you're saying that's not Birth material. I think maybe I should follow the Great Prophet's orthodox teachings and stick to Death."
"I meant," Hazō said, "that as a fellow cultist of Birth, you could help me kill those who threaten innocent lives, improve quality of life for as many people as possible, and generally make the world a place into which people want to bring more children and in which those children are guaranteed to survive and flourish. That'll reverse the decline and make sure Birth and Death are in balance."
"I see," Yuno said after a second. "So you want me to help you get the human population to a stable level."
"Right."
"Then we figure out the replacement rate and sacrifice everyone who isn't needed to maintain it, and that way Lord Jashin gets the greatest possible number of births and deaths, and we don't risk any of the problems of overpopulation or decline. Hazō, that's brilliant! Of course I'll help."
Wait, what?
"We'll have to get Kei and Snowflake to figure out how many people we need," Yuno said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't know where to start figuring that out–especially when you account for things like plagues, where the more people there are, the more likely somebody is to offend the disease spirits so they punish on the whole community. Also, we'll need to make sure Lord Jashin's cult takes over the world early on, because we don't want to end up in a situation where the non-Jashinist ninja population grows very fast and we end up facing a big ninja force that disagrees with how we do things. You know, suddenly a lot of the things you've been doing make much more sense."
"Nonono," Hazō hastened to correct her. "We want the human population to keep going up. If there's a line we don't want to cross, that's going to be many generations away. Until then, we should be doing everything we can to reverse the decline."
Yuno shook her head. "We have to start laying the foundations now, just like Akio and the Companions made sure the rules and rituals of Isan were laid down correctly from the very first day. Otherwise, by the time we get to that line–assuming it really is generations away–you'll be dead, and all the people who haven't accepted Lord Jashin's truth into their hearts are going to refuse to be massacred for the sake of the future. You have to make sacrifices to Lord Jashin part of the fabric of society now, so nobody thinks to question them when the time comes for mass sacrifice, just like Akio made the rules about being cruel to the unclean, so when I was growing up, nobody thought to question them even though I almost never did anything wrong."
"People aren't going to accept that," Hazō said. "Uplift can only happen if everyone accepts that it's a universal good. As soon as we give them reason to think some of them are going to be murdered, they're going to fight to preserve the current, broken ways."
"Then make them," Yuno said without any particular emotion. "Nobody outside the cult accepts being sacrificed either, so you sacrifice them through force because it's what's right. Lord Jashin is already guiding you in that direction. It's why all the seals you invent for the sake of Uplift are seals for killing people, not seals for, I don't know, making the soil more fertile or making women more fertile. It's why he gave you Mari, who hurts people for you without ever telling you, instead of Ami, who ends wars by persuading people to be nice to each other. It's why he sent the Great Prophet to teach you about murder instead of leaving you alone to carry on with the Uplift you were already working on.
"The more I talk to you about this, the more it makes sense," Yuno said with a trace of exaltation in her voice. "Everything I went through in Isan… maybe it was for this moment. Isan is defined by tradition, and my life was defined by tradition, and that's why I know that tradition is the most powerful force in the world if you can shape it, and a wall that you can't break down by being nice to people or using arguments that make sense or giving them things they ought to want. This is how I help you–not just by killing people who need killing, but by making sense of my life in Isan and teaching you how to use the same power, but in Lord Jashin's name."
Hazō fell silent. He didn't know where to start with that. He just didn't. Hazō had never really had to face religion in his life, either on its own terms or lurking in the hearts of those around him. He acknowledged the ancestors' influence, but it was very much in the background of his life. Thanks to Mum, he'd somehow managed to get by without being too indoctrinated by Yagura's teachings, and then his experiences outside Mist had been more than enough to shrug off what was left. He mostly just pretended the Will of Fire didn't exist when he wasn't busy using it to support his arguments or doing the minimum necessary to appease the Leaf ninja around him. And even now, he was paying the price for exploiting and then ignoring the Spirit of Youth. Would Akane still be alive if he'd engaged deeply with her beliefs from the start, and found a way forward for her that didn't eventually lead off a cliff?
"I see a wall ahead," Yuno suddenly announced. Hazō set his trail of thought aside in favour of the trails of chakra beasts.
The village of Masatsumura was silent as the grave, which was grimly ironic since none of the inhabitants had got one. The tax collectors who discovered the massacre must have looked around and then simply gone away, not bothering to collect the bodies or even do them the basic honour of a funeral pyre that would bear away the souls of the worthy to rejoin the Will of Fire and protect even the unworthy from desecration. Convenient, for an investigator needing to know what killed them, but also a cold reminder that civilians could hold each other in just as much contempt as the ninja held them.
"Scavengers," Yuno concluded after studying several of the bodies, which lay scattered in a haphazard fashion across the village territory: most alone, but some in twos and threes, all torn apart by what Yuno now told him were lesser chakra beasts hungry for dead flesh. Little remained but bones with scraps of flesh hanging off them. It was next to impossible to tell the damage inflicted before death from damage after.
"They must have tried to defend themselves," Hazō observed. "Many of these bodies have makeshift weapons next to them–rakes, clubs, even chairs for those inside the buildings. It wasn't a sudden attack; the sentries on the walls must have had time to raise the alarm."
"But the gates were open," Yuno said. "It was sudden enough that nobody had time to close them, even though it should have been easy to spot a chakra beast or a group of chakra beasts big enough to wipe out an entire village."
"Burrowers?" Hazō suggested. "Or fliers?"
"No burrowing chakra beasts in this area," Yuno said. "I've been following the reports, and those don't seem to have been affected by the disruption to the migration patterns. It could be fliers, but then everyone would have rushed indoors and there are so many people outside."
"You're right," Hazō confirmed after a cursory search of the buildings. "Some of those people were killed indoors, but the majority are outside, carrying cooking knives and rolling pins and other things they could only have got if they were coming out from their homes."
Masatsumura was beginning to look increasingly like a dead end. There were plenty of trails to follow, but no way of telling the scavenger trails apart from that of the chakra beast responsible. Plenty of damage to the bodies, but no way of identifying the nature of the killing blow.
"Hazō," Yuno said from near the wall, her voice trembling, "what is going on here?"
"What is it, Yuno?"
Hazō came over.
"Sage's ballsack," he spat.
Several of the bodies had arrows sticking out of them. Not just one, as of an archer firing into melee and accidentally hitting a friend. Several. More littered the ground nearby, some piercing it at acute angles.
"Those must be the archers," he said, pointing to two bodies bearing empty quivers. They were too far from the wall to have been knocked off it. "But why would they shoot their own people? Why use up all their arrows and then climb down? That doesn't make sense if there were chakra beasts on the ground and the wall was the safest place, and if they were in the air, then you'd climb down first and get to cover."
Yuno stared at the bodies. "Hazō, what if we've got it all wrong? What if they weren't all slaughtered by chakra beasts?"
"But then…" Hazō said, "what could have done this to an entire village?
"Wait, do you hear the sound of wings?"
Alertness: Yuno (??), Flying chakra beast (??), Hazō (29)
Round 1
Yuno
Supplemental: Retrieve earplugs
Standard Manoeuvre: Insert earplugs
Yuno creates the Personal Aspect "Hear No Evil" and gets a tag on it. She also receives a penalty to Alertness.
Supplemental: Draw air dome seals
Flying chakra beast
???: ??? + ? = ?
Yuno tags "Hear No Evil".
Yuno: Resolve ?? + ? + ?= ??
Yuno resists.
Hazō: Resolve 54 + 6 = 60
Hazō resists.
Hazō
Hazō sees Yuno prepare the air dome seals, but disagrees with her tactical decision.
Full-Round: Insert and activate skywalkers.
Round 2
Yuno
Yuno mutters something under her breath on seeing Hazō's actions.
Full-Round: Insert and activate skywalkers.
Flying chakra beast
Full-Round: Move
Hazō
Hazō uses chakra boost every round from this point.
Full-Round: Move
The combat turns into a chase sequence. Each victory either closes or expands the gap between the flying chakra beast and the ninja. Three successes put it in attack range. Three failures drop the ninja too far behind to follow.
Flying chakra beast: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Hazō: Athletics 34 + 4 + 0 = 38
Yuno: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Yuno: 1 success
Hazō: 1 failure
Flying chakra beast: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Hazō: Athletics 34 + 4 - 6 = 32
Yuno: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Yuno: 2 success
Hazō: 2 failure
Flying chakra beast: Athletics ?? + ? = ??
Yuno Athletics ??+ ? = ??
Hazō: Athletics 34 + 4 + 0 = 38
Yuno: 3 success
Hazō: 3 failure
Combat ends for Hazō.
The last thing Hazō saw was Yuno thrusting her hand into her belt pouch. Then everything went blank.
After a second of disorientation, he heard the voice in his mind, explaining everything, leaving no room for doubt. It was Yuno. Yuno was the real threat here. She stood in the way of everything he wanted. She was going to kill him, yes, kill him the very next instant. He could already see her pulling something out, surely a deadly weapon with which she'd strike him down if he didn't strike first. He had to strike first. She needed to die.
Hazō nearly laughed as the insidious message of hatred and murder attempted to wind its way into the crevices of his mind… and met a rock-hard wall built over subjective months of focused meditation. There was no room for malign influence, no room for anything but Hazō himself within the fortress of his will. The chakra beast's scrabbling against that wall was so ineffectual it might as well have attempted to seduce him by dressing up as Lord Hagoromo. Its insistent whispers turned into the dying echoes of an ugly croak as Hazō looked up and beheld his foe.
The birdlike creature was perhaps twice the size of an albatross, with a long, wickedly-hooked beak, its grey feathers interrupted only on its shining, pearlescent neck, and its breast, marked by a golden circle. It stared down at him, and though Hazō had no experience in reading possibly-avian body language, he was sure its beady eyes were filled with confusion and disbelief.
"A discord pigeon," Yuno said, somewhat louder than was necessary. "They're supposed to be very rare." She reached for her pouch again, this time pulling out a pair of air dome seals.
Hazō could see what she was thinking. It was the tactic Noburi had employed against the assassin the day Minami died. Air domes cut off air. They cut off sound. An air dome would keep the chakra beast's hypnotic croak at bay long enough for them to strategise and prepare. It wasn't the move Hazō would have expected from someone like Yuno, but then again, she was a veteran chakra beast hunter, and he already knew Isan's vicinity featured mind-influencing chakra beasts.
However, Hazō had a different idea. Without Kei or Snowflake, they were woefully under-equipped to take on a flying enemy. While they could try their luck with an explosive tag, their throwing skills were sadly lacking, especially vertically upwards. A single miss, or even a minor hit, would be enough to scare off any halfway sensible bird… and this thing needed to die here and now. It couldn't be allowed to do this to another village.
Instead, Hazō reached for the skywalker inserts he'd been forced to take off before they were ruined by the mud. After a second's glare, Yuno dropped the seals and followed his example.
Unfortunately, the discord pigeon had taken those few seconds to decide that discretion was the better part of valour anyway. Hazō and Yuno gave chase, this time ready to unleash the full weight of their arsenals the second they were in range. As a ninja, there was little more honourable than stabbing an enemy in the back.
They gave chase… and gave chase… and gave chase. Bit by bit, Yuno and the discord pigeon receded into the distance as Hazō's legs turned into lead weights and his lungs tried to tear themselves out of his chest in protest at unacceptable working conditions. Finally, he was forced to admit defeat and leave the hunting to the professional.
Instead, he did something else that needed to be done. There was a limit to how many bodies a single Hazō could drag into a funeral pyre in a few hours, especially as the cold began to numb his fingers, but he wasn't the kind of man who could sit around and relax amidst a pile of corpses he hadn't made (and, in a second grim irony, the mostly-eaten state of the bodies meant they were very light and conveniently portable for funerary purposes).
-o-
"I found a new colour!"
Hazō turned around from the roughly-carved bench he'd been sitting on to see Yuno, covered in green liquid and grinning in a tired but still rather maniacal fashion.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The blood," Yuno explained. "I thought at first it was lime, but it's not. It's a kind of greenish-yellow I haven't seen before. I'm going to have to go find a dye seller and ask them what it's called. Do you know how exciting that is?"
Hazō decided not to press the matter further.
"I take it you killed the discord pigeon?"
"Sure did," Yuno said. "At first, I was going to butcher it there and then, but then I realised it would be better to let it lead me to its nest, so I dropped back a little and stalked it, and I was right! There were three whole chicks to kill. Also, there were human remains. Three people, all really big and well-muscled, without much by way of injuries except for the bits the chicks were eating and the talon swipes across the throat. I decided to leave them as they were."
"Huh," Hazō said for lack of anything else he could possibly say.
With that, they headed back.
"Say, Yuno," Hazō said eventually, deciding he'd rather talk about disturbing things he was at least familiar with than dwell on friends and families being forced to kill each other by a monster against which they had no defence. "You said you didn't know about Jashin before, but wasn't his symbol there at your wedding?"
"It was," Yuno said, "but I only knew it as one of the symbols of the Old Gods that you need to use in various rituals. If you want to know about it, you should ask the Inoue. As loremasters, it's their duty to know the stories of the Old Gods and what they are and where they went and what to do if it ever seems like they're coming back. Ordinary people like me don't need esoteric knowledge like that, and besides, obviously the lore is wrong–the Old Gods are supposed to be something to fear, but Lord Jashin is what I've been looking for all my life without knowing it."
Talk to the loremasters, she said. How would Yuno feel when she learned Isan had been annihilated? Would she be heartbroken? Would she be heartbroken that she didn't get to do it herself? Hazō had no idea how to navigate the complexity of her feelings about Isan. He only knew that, whatever her reaction, he would be the one responsible, and EM OPSEC meant he'd never be able to ask her forgiveness for as long as he lived.
Hazō moved on before his expression gave anything away.
"So you don't know what gods were responsible for Jashin losing his tongue?"
"No," Yuno said. "I didn't even know he'd lost his tongue. I really need to learn more about Lord Jashin. If you find out who they were, let me know so I can kill them in his name."
"What about Jashin making the Sage bleed?"
Yuno's mouth split into a broad smile. "He did?"
"Apparently."
"Sorry, though, I don't know."
"What about the King of Hell?" Hazō tried. "I've heard that title many times now, and given Jashin's the god of Birth and Death and murder and blood and possibly peppermint tea, do you think they could be the same person?"
Yuno considered.
"The Great Prophet said people count as sacrifices, but beasts and summons don't, though maybe that's because summons don't really die when you kill them. So if the population of an entire other Path doesn't count for Lord Jashin, doesn't that mean humans are special to him, and therefore the Human Path is special? That doesn't sound right for somebody whose main job is ruling Hell."
"True," Hazō conceded. "Ugh, why is trying to get reliable lore about anything like trying to beat my head against the wall?"
"Sorry," Yuno said. "It seems like Isan's the only place where people have taken lots of care to preserve ancient lore and don't have rules about keeping everything secret. Maybe that's another thing we can change when we take over the world."
Oh, right. That was another thing that urgently needed taking care of.
"About that," Hazō said. "Leaf isn't ready for Jashinism. I need them to embrace Uplift first, and then that can be my vehicle for preparing them for the full thing. That means publicly supporting Jashinism now is going to be a problem for us politically, and that in turn makes it a problem for Jashin's plans, which include me accomplishing Uplift. With that in mind, can I ask you to keep it secret for now?"
"I guess," Yuno said reluctantly. "But if it's such a problem, why did the Great Prophet tell everybody?"
Hazō sighed. "I don't know. I guess maybe he's not all that aware of the political situation in Leaf, and just how much me being known as a Jashinist would screw me over. Or maybe it's a test–but even if it is, I can only pass that test by serving Jashin while making everyone think I don't, not by admitting it to a hostile Leaf and probably being executed for heresy."
"It seems disloyal," Yuno said disapprovingly. "It would make Lord Jashin happy if everybody went around making sacrifices to him–and, I guess, making children who can be sacrifices to him later. I heard the Great Prophet even said something about a temple to him, and I think that's a great idea."
"When Leaf is ready," Hazō stressed. "Birth needs a different approach from Death, and Jashin's chosen to let me do my job, not have Hidan do it. Yuno, this is important: even if we have some theological disagreements, can I trust you to keep our Jashinism secret and let me serve Jashin the way I, his favoured, believe he wants to be served?"
"But isn't the kraken out of the inkwell already?" Yuno asked. "It's been nearly two days since the Great Prophet revealed your allegiance. Everyone in Leaf must know by now, and you haven't done anything to deny it."
"I left that to Mari."
"Oh," Yuno said. "But isn't that like sending somebody to apologise for you? If you don't do it yourself, it's not going to come across as very sincere. You could maybe get away with that if you were too sick or too busy to leave your home, but you're out here hunting chakra beasts with me."
Hazō sighed. "I'll figure it out. For now, let's deal with one thing at a time. Can I trust you to keep our secret until I judge Leaf is ready?"
Yuno hesitated before answering. "I guess. But this is all to protect us from political problems, right?"
"Right."
"So it's fine if I convert the rest of the family," she concluded. "Maybe not Kagome, because the other day I taught him a secret Isanese charm to keep the hair grease demons away, and within a week it was an Academy playground rhyme, but I certainly have to bring my husband into the cult, and I already told you what I thought about Snowflake, and then I'm sure Kei will join to support her sister-lover-whatever they are. Also, Mari has no problem with torturing and killing people for a higher cause, and I may still be unhappy with her over the whole Orochimaru thing, but I'm not the kind of cultist who'd keep the joy of Lord Jashin from someone just because they did bad things in the past."
Hazō opened his mouth to object.
"Hazō," Yuno said severely, "are you ashamed to be a cultist of Lord Jashin?"
"That's not it. It's just–"
"Do you trust the rest of our family less than you trust me?"
"...No."
"Good," Yuno said. "I finally have a family, Hazō, and I don't want to see us divided. I'll talk to Noburi tonight, once he gets back from the hospital. Now come on, we have to reach the safe zone before it gets dark and the chakra chinchilla swarms erupt."
-o-
You have received 3 + 1 (Brevity) + 1 (Fun-to-Write) = 5 XP.
Words cannot begin to understand how much I love this chapter this may be my new favorite chapter.before this I didn't particularly care for Yuno now I mean I wasn't against her in any sense the word but like she wasn't really the most interesting she is not one of my favorite characters this gave her so much character and I love her new dynamic. Yuno the reason why he was given Mari before Ami wasn't because of death aspect but because only by dragging her to better personhood would he be prepared to handle Ami.
Alright, we got a few things needing urgent or semi-urgent attention:
We need to head off the Yuno thing by conferring with the rest of the clan about how this is what Yuno believes and what she thinks we believe. We need them to be prepared for when Yuno comes to convert them and talks about how Hazou had a private conversation with her about how much he supports Jashin and all that.
Leaf at large needs to be dissuaded from the notion as well. As Yuno said, leaving Mari to handle it is going to lead to suboptimal results all around. At the very least we should lend ourselves to her plans and do what she needs us to do to set up the right dominoes, but having some ideas of our own would not be remiss.
Not urgent but I don't want to wait for it: we still want to try doping ES structures to try and unlock 3D Sealing.
I think this makes for a good-sized plan, given that the Mari section might not involve much detail or on-screen activity and the doping test only warrants meaningful attention if it actually works.
This was my interpretation of the plan, which mentioned disapproving of Hidan, but in no way implied disapproval of Jashin or reluctance to do his Birth-type bidding.
I'm kind of with Paper on this one, Hazou's prayed to Jashin a few too many times to really be an unaffiliated bystander at this point. Maybe the players don't agree on exactly where he really stands but narratively Hazou is entrenched in the Jashin shit one way or another, and not just because Hidan forced him to. The Otter scroll, seance, and Akane-search moments were all without Hidan's bidding
"That's right," Yuno said. "It was really sad. Right before he died, he was boasting how Ami said she thought he was ready for a higher position in the FGP, and she was even willing to pull some strings to fix his reputation with the rank-and-file by getting him onto one of those deep raiding squads that are really only meant for ANBU and jōnin candidates. I hope he got to massacre lots of enemy civilians like he wanted before he died."
"Exactly!" Hazō exclaimed delightedly. "That's the perfect analogy. Right now, too many prey animals, which is to say civilians, are dying, and the world's heading in the direction where they get wiped out and then the predators, which is to say ninja, end up starving to death." Actually, that analogy got more disturbing the more he thought about it. "That's doubly true for Jashin, because ninja just need enough civilians to feed them, whereas Jashin needs enough civilians to feed his cultists–who are also ninja–and to be regularly sacrificed.
"I've been working to prevent that doomsday scenario ever since I was a missing-nin, long before I first heard of Jashin at the Chūnin Exams. Then, when I had a chance to talk to Hidan about Jashin at O'Uzu, he approved of Uplift as Jashin's high priest, and to prove the point, Jashin kept favouring me. I never told you about Bakuchioka, but there was this time when Hidan forced me to gamble for a village's worth of lives, and I had such incredible luck keeping people alive that it could only be Jashin's favour. In other words, Jashin agreed with me that people should live–not everyone, in the event, but definitely a majority."
"So you're saying," Yuno reasoned, "that Lord Jashin wants people to be sacrificed, but not so many that it tips the balance. But the Great Prophet never said anything about that."
"Because it's not his role," Hazō agreed. "He's in charge of Death. At O'Uzu, he was doing Birth as well, but he admitted himself that he wasn't that good at it compared to all the killing. Right now, there's too much Death and not enough Birth. I recognised that without Jashin's help, and I have a solid plan for fixing it–and between Bakuchioka and other things, it's clear Jashin approves. He wants me to take over Birth. Will you help me with that?"
Goddammit, the matter-of-fact confidence with which we spew all this bullshit that we've come up with on the fly. I love it.
"We'll have to get Kei and Snowflake to figure out how many people we need," Yuno said thoughtfully. "I wouldn't know where to start figuring that out–especially when you account for things like plagues, where the more people there are, the more likely somebody is to offend the disease spirits so they punish on the whole community. Also, we'll need to make sure Lord Jashin's cult takes over the world early on, because we don't want to end up in a situation where the non-Jashinist ninja population grows very fast and we end up facing a big ninja force that disagrees with how we do things. You know, suddenly a lot of the things you've been doing make much more sense."
I've been looking through some past chapters, and...
Back when Ami and Kei had left to hunt down the Condor Summoner, Ami had forced Shikamaru to be annoying at us even more than he's naturally inclined to be, which is truly an Ami-tier achievement, and had him pass us a message:
I say we've had quite enough of all that. Who's up for jokingly ranting at her about all this the next Velorien update? As a light-hearted segue from proactively addressing the FOOM question, I guess. I think @MMKII was planning something like this?
More directly than the dishonesty, this chapter really drove home for me how much we (as in both Hazou and the playerbase) infantilize, distrust and disrespect Yuno. We're not treating her like an equal in personhood, we are acting like we're trying to trick a not-especially-bright child.
We don't use this level of kid-gloves for Kagome, for Bear-summoner guy...
