Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rational rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
On reflection, Itachi stole Conjura's Jutsu, including the "teleport while carrying someone" Jutsu, so just Force Dome and Iron Earth are insufficient to defend against him teleporting in with Deidara.
We'd also need a do-not-mess-with-spacetime rune.
We cannot invent these three novel runes before Itachi loses patience with our slow return.
🎶Soon we'll go missing again🎶
We'd also need a do-not-mess-with-spacetime rune.
We cannot invent these three novel runes before Itachi loses patience with our slow return.
🎶Soon we'll go missing again🎶
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
So, what does our chakra situation look like?
Bleak, obviously, if we don't have access to thousands of chakra from various Leaf-nin to fuel our FOOMing. So forget FOOM for now, how's our research look like?
First, let's assume we have Noburi in the party. Manage to sneak him out under the cover of night or something, the rest of core Team Uplift coming with. As a first-order guess, let's assume there's about 1000 chakra "available" when you sum up all the party members. Is that enough for Hazou's research?
We probably want 4 Hazou's running around, so we can run 2 SSA tracks and 2 non-SSA tracks. This uses up a healthy majority of our clone-hours and lets us keep trying prep days while still making fast progress on our core goals. Hazou casts Shadow Clone for 3 clones, costing 225 chakra in total. His reserves of 315 chakra are reduced to 90 and split four ways, giving each clone 22.5 chakra. Split the 1000 "available" chakra four ways and each Hazou can have 272.5 chakra, easily enough to research with.
How much is that, exactly? Infusing a rune costs 50 chakra, but Paperclipped recently clarified/reminded on discord that the passive chakra regen during rune blank creation can be considered to pay the cost of infusion. In other words, we only need to worry about the costs of Earthshaping. Casting Earthshaping at our maximum of Effect 6 requires 76 chakra, paid twice: once at startup and once at shutdown (failing to shutdown properly, on top of being dangerous, would cause the rune to "also take damage, possibly ruining it"). Timeladdering up to "a few hours" (let's assume 3), we pay a sustain cost of 180 chakra. Sum it up and we need to spend 332 chakra on Earthshaping.
That's a problem, since it means Hazou physically cannot shape a rune without a mid-session refill. But maybe we don't need to cast it at Effect 6? That's the level that enables filtering/purification of materials, which we probably don't need as we already have substrate to work with. Effect 5 is what lets us change polymorphs, which we also don't need. Effect 4 is what enables fusing of materials, which sounds important. So, this is only a "probably", but we can probably get away with casting at Effect 4. This costs 30 chakra per cast, for a total of 240 chakra when accounting for both casts and the sustain.
So, it either costs 332 chakra or 240 chakra to make a rune. If it's the latter (which seems likely), then 1000 chakra sourced from teammates is enough to create 4 runes on the same day. If it's the former, then we can only afford to infuse 3 runes on the same day (the last SC, we must presume did a prep day instead, which takes no chakra. Having Noburi physically in the party means SCs only need as much chakra as they're going to use, as opposed to our current limitations).
Now, is 1000 chakra reasonable? If we bring the full Team Uplift with us, we'll have Kei, Kagome, Mari, and Yuno as donors. I would be shocked if they didn't average at least 250 chakra a person. In fact, they probably have enough in excess of that that we can afford to care about "not draining everyone dry of chakra" so they can do their own training or be combat-ready for the Hyena front lines or something. Point is, Team Uplift as a whole has enough chakra regen to sustain any of Hazou's research needs.
(Most days, Hazou won't need any chakra support at all, only doing prep days. Some days he'll only be doing one or two infusions, and only need a few hundred chakra donated from the team. But even if we go full-hog and infuse four runes on the same day, we can (probably) do that just fine.)
But what if we don't have Noburi with us? If it's just Hazou and his own internal reserves, no support? Well, the math on that is fairly clear. Hazou probably has enough chakra to infuse one rune on a given day. That's it. He can't use Shadow Clone on that day, so he can't be doing any prep days. He can't multithread at all, because that would require either simultaneous infusion (which he can't afford) or also doing a prep day (which he can't). The most he could do is weave in some prep day difficulty checks while the one (1) research track prepares for infusion. Even if we went to the magic chakra water spring, it would have to have a truly enormous effect to even bring "an infusion and a prep day" into the realm of possibility, let alone multiple simultaneous infusions.
Without Noburi, we may as well be at a standstill. We can't research in those conditions, not the breadth and depth needed to complete all our runic weapons and runic tools in the necessary timeframe. With the full Team Uplift at our side, we're a researching machine. Without him, we may as well give up on preventing Pain's return. If so, I recommend going off the map to a place where we won't be hunted and see if there's any forbidden lore there. If we give up on the necromancy race then we're playing the long game, hoping the world remains in one piece long enough for us to complete our research anyways. Or maybe we tell Hana what's going on and ask her to help us kidnap a Wakahisa or something, idk.
Bleak, obviously, if we don't have access to thousands of chakra from various Leaf-nin to fuel our FOOMing. So forget FOOM for now, how's our research look like?
First, let's assume we have Noburi in the party. Manage to sneak him out under the cover of night or something, the rest of core Team Uplift coming with. As a first-order guess, let's assume there's about 1000 chakra "available" when you sum up all the party members. Is that enough for Hazou's research?
We probably want 4 Hazou's running around, so we can run 2 SSA tracks and 2 non-SSA tracks. This uses up a healthy majority of our clone-hours and lets us keep trying prep days while still making fast progress on our core goals. Hazou casts Shadow Clone for 3 clones, costing 225 chakra in total. His reserves of 315 chakra are reduced to 90 and split four ways, giving each clone 22.5 chakra. Split the 1000 "available" chakra four ways and each Hazou can have 272.5 chakra, easily enough to research with.
How much is that, exactly? Infusing a rune costs 50 chakra, but Paperclipped recently clarified/reminded on discord that the passive chakra regen during rune blank creation can be considered to pay the cost of infusion. In other words, we only need to worry about the costs of Earthshaping. Casting Earthshaping at our maximum of Effect 6 requires 76 chakra, paid twice: once at startup and once at shutdown (failing to shutdown properly, on top of being dangerous, would cause the rune to "also take damage, possibly ruining it"). Timeladdering up to "a few hours" (let's assume 3), we pay a sustain cost of 180 chakra. Sum it up and we need to spend 332 chakra on Earthshaping.
That's a problem, since it means Hazou physically cannot shape a rune without a mid-session refill. But maybe we don't need to cast it at Effect 6? That's the level that enables filtering/purification of materials, which we probably don't need as we already have substrate to work with. Effect 5 is what lets us change polymorphs, which we also don't need. Effect 4 is what enables fusing of materials, which sounds important. So, this is only a "probably", but we can probably get away with casting at Effect 4. This costs 30 chakra per cast, for a total of 240 chakra when accounting for both casts and the sustain.
So, it either costs 332 chakra or 240 chakra to make a rune. If it's the latter (which seems likely), then 1000 chakra sourced from teammates is enough to create 4 runes on the same day. If it's the former, then we can only afford to infuse 3 runes on the same day (the last SC, we must presume did a prep day instead, which takes no chakra. Having Noburi physically in the party means SCs only need as much chakra as they're going to use, as opposed to our current limitations).
Now, is 1000 chakra reasonable? If we bring the full Team Uplift with us, we'll have Kei, Kagome, Mari, and Yuno as donors. I would be shocked if they didn't average at least 250 chakra a person. In fact, they probably have enough in excess of that that we can afford to care about "not draining everyone dry of chakra" so they can do their own training or be combat-ready for the Hyena front lines or something. Point is, Team Uplift as a whole has enough chakra regen to sustain any of Hazou's research needs.
(Most days, Hazou won't need any chakra support at all, only doing prep days. Some days he'll only be doing one or two infusions, and only need a few hundred chakra donated from the team. But even if we go full-hog and infuse four runes on the same day, we can (probably) do that just fine.)
But what if we don't have Noburi with us? If it's just Hazou and his own internal reserves, no support? Well, the math on that is fairly clear. Hazou probably has enough chakra to infuse one rune on a given day. That's it. He can't use Shadow Clone on that day, so he can't be doing any prep days. He can't multithread at all, because that would require either simultaneous infusion (which he can't afford) or also doing a prep day (which he can't). The most he could do is weave in some prep day difficulty checks while the one (1) research track prepares for infusion. Even if we went to the magic chakra water spring, it would have to have a truly enormous effect to even bring "an infusion and a prep day" into the realm of possibility, let alone multiple simultaneous infusions.
Without Noburi, we may as well be at a standstill. We can't research in those conditions, not the breadth and depth needed to complete all our runic weapons and runic tools in the necessary timeframe. With the full Team Uplift at our side, we're a researching machine. Without him, we may as well give up on preventing Pain's return. If so, I recommend going off the map to a place where we won't be hunted and see if there's any forbidden lore there. If we give up on the necromancy race then we're playing the long game, hoping the world remains in one piece long enough for us to complete our research anyways. Or maybe we tell Hana what's going on and ask her to help us kidnap a Wakahisa or something, idk.
- Location
- France
The logistical issues are insurmountable. We can't carry a powerful chakra beast around safely while regularly going on the run using skywalkers.
Before I begin, I would like to say I'm a big fan of the quest, and have enjoyed it quite a bit.
But warning ahead, maybe a bit of salt.
Intended mainly for @eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped but fair warning it's neither a necessary or important to read.
Also, any timeline on those dice rolls from the last Dog combat?
But warning ahead, maybe a bit of salt.
Intended mainly for @eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped but fair warning it's neither a necessary or important to read.
How I feel rn.
But grrrr, reading this, and having this be the outcome is really, really not pleasant or fun. This was easily foreseeable from the very beginning, and every action we took to try and navigate around that was stopped and fought pretty aggressively (by the QMs and onscreen through Naruto). The quest is supposed to be "simulationist" and the reason (I assume) the QMs go to such lengths to keep it such is to give the player base agency. It allows us to come up with clever solutions, be rewarded for inventive ideas, and generally have a good time on the "quest" part of this whole adventure. Thereby rewarding the players that spend extra time and read carefully. But for the last couple dozens chapters or so it's increasingly felt like a long and tedious railroad where the player-base was stripped of basically any agency with us heading to a pre-chosen and foreseeable outcome. This felt quite over-determined and led us to possibly the worse situation one could conceivably put us in. Which I may note, was able to easily be foreseen beforehand not only by me
But reviewing the timeline:
There's a split in the player base on whether to leave Leaf.
Akatsuki tells us to go missing. We say no.
Railroad(ish) #1: Chapter 632 Naruto, somewhat out of character, someone who narratively hated our guts for caring about our immediate family over Leaf, suddenly asks us to commit literal treason.
It was even commented on how it felt a little meh:
The reason to go missing? It was to prevent us from becoming a loot pinata to Akatsuki. Note, and this is important, the goal is the important part. Not the action in of itself. If we could determine a way to not become a loot pinata through some other action we would choose to do so. Now what was the reason to going missing? It would let us evade Akasuki's ability to hurt us and take our stuff. (and thereby not become a loot pinata.) Keep that in mind. The goal was not to become a loot pinata. Anything toward that end is good. Anything away is bad.
But we were given assurances that the players still had the ability to choose and this was in no way putting the finger on the scale:
Railroad #2: Chapter 651 Naruto sits us down and says we have to go missing.
Notice the snipping of available choices by the player base? We're forced to go missing. But onward:
We agree, keeping our eyes on goal of not being a loot pinata ask to bring our family with us. Why? Because our family could be used as leverage against us. We would be a loot pinata if Noburi was going to be tortured unless we complied. And we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere with little support in case something goes wrong.
Railroad #3: Chapter 652 We were told in no uncertain terms that this was complete insanity of an ask. Not just a little unreasonable but completely off the table. Now, not only are we told we have to go missing, but we're also stripped of how. Even though we'd gone on missions with similar people in the past (O'Uzu, Neck, Asuma eastern continent) sans Kagome and Mari. (with Akane being alive, mind you) Could we plausibly take our normal gang plus Kagome due to Akane's death? on a "seal research trip?" or "scroll hunting" No. No we could not. Could we use cleverness and deceit? Send multiple separate missions separately? Maybe the gang, and then Mari on a solo Jonin mission? Nope. Could we do anything at all except send four people? Nope. Why? Because Akatsuki might throw a tantrum in retaliation. Raze Leaf to the ground in response to a perceived broken promise. But! One might reasonably ask, what happens if they get suspicious anyway? What if, just hypothetically speaking, Itachi arrives in Leaf, doesn't believe this "fake" story, and asks for Hazo back anyway? What happens then? Does Itachi perceive a broken promise as well? Almost certainly! Raze Leaf to the ground time! (or in both cases Leaf is percieved as having broken a promise, as I may note, we are literally breaking if not the promise but the spirit) What if it's the case that the number of people you bring on your trip doesn't matter at all? What if, (strictly hypothetically) in all scenarios, Itachi is always suspicious when the sealmaster he specifically told to not research seals suddenly stops answering his calls and goes missing? What would that mean? To put it bluntly, would leaving Leaf with a small party stop us from becoming a loot pinata? I would say the answer (as shown today) is no. No it did not. As Itachi currently holds our family hostage. And this was easily foreseen from the start.
I even complained quite loudly in the chat:
But I got, shall I say, firm push-back from the QMs on why this was legit and why it actually helped our goals and how I was perceiving our situation in Leaf incorrectly.
No, (I was told) Leaf has combat punching ability beyond Hazo at Akasuki level and therefore has leverage, meaning Leaf (and therefore) Naruto doesn't need to immediately fold to Itachi or forced to disregard clan secrets. It's super important that Hazo goes with a small gang to not be seen as suspicious, and if he brought a lot of punching power, that would be somehow suspicious and therefore bad, etc, etc.
But here we are:
Where none of that was shown to be true and it didn't matter how big of a gang Hazo brought, he'll go missing regardless, and is seen as "suspicious" by Akasumi immediately and most definitely up to something.
And I'm feeling more than a touch miffed here.
I forecasted what would happen and why.
I couldn't do much about it as I received quite firm statements (from the QMs) on why the situation I was worried about could not happen (I might be exaggerating a touch here but not by much) or why my reasoning on this situation was incorrect (by the QMs, in chat, discord, or through Naruto on screen)
Exactly what I forecasted happened for basically the exact reasons I was worried about.
We are exactly where I said we would be in 3 months if we followed through on this. And it's terrible.
*frustrated noises*
But putting me and my feelings aside, I have a serious question for the QMs. What actions could the player-base have taken to prevent this scenario from taking place?
(The situation being Itachi perceives the deal he made with Leaf to plausibly been broken, the leaders of Leaf are unable to do much to stop Akasuki's demands, our family is in easy torture/kidnapping range, we're stuck in the middle of nowhere, we're now missing ninja with minimal to no support or backup. Just all around the worst possible scenario)
As when I look back on the timeline, I'm not seeing a plausible path we could have taken, without extreme push-back from the QMs (meaning we'd have needed to, out of the setting, convince the QMs that Naruto's actions weren't making any sense and have Naruto retroactively act differently) All paths lead to having our family in torture range of Itachi, when we're told to go missing/are found out, no?
But grrrr, reading this, and having this be the outcome is really, really not pleasant or fun. This was easily foreseeable from the very beginning, and every action we took to try and navigate around that was stopped and fought pretty aggressively (by the QMs and onscreen through Naruto). The quest is supposed to be "simulationist" and the reason (I assume) the QMs go to such lengths to keep it such is to give the player base agency. It allows us to come up with clever solutions, be rewarded for inventive ideas, and generally have a good time on the "quest" part of this whole adventure. Thereby rewarding the players that spend extra time and read carefully. But for the last couple dozens chapters or so it's increasingly felt like a long and tedious railroad where the player-base was stripped of basically any agency with us heading to a pre-chosen and foreseeable outcome. This felt quite over-determined and led us to possibly the worse situation one could conceivably put us in. Which I may note, was able to easily be foreseen beforehand not only by me
but by others as well:
But reviewing the timeline:
There's a split in the player base on whether to leave Leaf.
Akatsuki tells us to go missing. We say no.
Railroad(ish) #1: Chapter 632 Naruto, somewhat out of character, someone who narratively hated our guts for caring about our immediate family over Leaf, suddenly asks us to commit literal treason.
It was even commented on how it felt a little meh:
Then there's a large split in the player base on whether or not to go missing nin. If memory serves it was around 50-50 with a lot of talk both ways (I recall there being a lean toward missing from the active members of this quest)
The reason to go missing? It was to prevent us from becoming a loot pinata to Akatsuki. Note, and this is important, the goal is the important part. Not the action in of itself. If we could determine a way to not become a loot pinata through some other action we would choose to do so. Now what was the reason to going missing? It would let us evade Akasuki's ability to hurt us and take our stuff. (and thereby not become a loot pinata.) Keep that in mind. The goal was not to become a loot pinata. Anything toward that end is good. Anything away is bad.
But we were given assurances that the players still had the ability to choose and this was in no way putting the finger on the scale:
But then came:
Railroad #2: Chapter 651 Naruto sits us down and says we have to go missing.
Notice the snipping of available choices by the player base? We're forced to go missing. But onward:
We agree, keeping our eyes on goal of not being a loot pinata ask to bring our family with us. Why? Because our family could be used as leverage against us. We would be a loot pinata if Noburi was going to be tortured unless we complied. And we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere with little support in case something goes wrong.
Railroad #3: Chapter 652 We were told in no uncertain terms that this was complete insanity of an ask. Not just a little unreasonable but completely off the table. Now, not only are we told we have to go missing, but we're also stripped of how. Even though we'd gone on missions with similar people in the past (O'Uzu, Neck, Asuma eastern continent) sans Kagome and Mari. (with Akane being alive, mind you) Could we plausibly take our normal gang plus Kagome due to Akane's death? on a "seal research trip?" or "scroll hunting" No. No we could not. Could we use cleverness and deceit? Send multiple separate missions separately? Maybe the gang, and then Mari on a solo Jonin mission? Nope. Could we do anything at all except send four people? Nope. Why? Because Akatsuki might throw a tantrum in retaliation. Raze Leaf to the ground in response to a perceived broken promise. But! One might reasonably ask, what happens if they get suspicious anyway? What if, just hypothetically speaking, Itachi arrives in Leaf, doesn't believe this "fake" story, and asks for Hazo back anyway? What happens then? Does Itachi perceive a broken promise as well? Almost certainly! Raze Leaf to the ground time! (or in both cases Leaf is percieved as having broken a promise, as I may note, we are literally breaking if not the promise but the spirit) What if it's the case that the number of people you bring on your trip doesn't matter at all? What if, (strictly hypothetically) in all scenarios, Itachi is always suspicious when the sealmaster he specifically told to not research seals suddenly stops answering his calls and goes missing? What would that mean? To put it bluntly, would leaving Leaf with a small party stop us from becoming a loot pinata? I would say the answer (as shown today) is no. No it did not. As Itachi currently holds our family hostage. And this was easily foreseen from the start.
I even complained quite loudly in the chat:
But I got, shall I say, firm push-back from the QMs on why this was legit and why it actually helped our goals and how I was perceiving our situation in Leaf incorrectly.
Discord
No, (I was told) Leaf has combat punching ability beyond Hazo at Akasuki level and therefore has leverage, meaning Leaf (and therefore) Naruto doesn't need to immediately fold to Itachi or forced to disregard clan secrets. It's super important that Hazo goes with a small gang to not be seen as suspicious, and if he brought a lot of punching power, that would be somehow suspicious and therefore bad, etc, etc.
But here we are:
Where none of that was shown to be true and it didn't matter how big of a gang Hazo brought, he'll go missing regardless, and is seen as "suspicious" by Akasumi immediately and most definitely up to something.
And I'm feeling more than a touch miffed here.
I forecasted what would happen and why.
I couldn't do much about it as I received quite firm statements (from the QMs) on why the situation I was worried about could not happen (I might be exaggerating a touch here but not by much) or why my reasoning on this situation was incorrect (by the QMs, in chat, discord, or through Naruto on screen)
Exactly what I forecasted happened for basically the exact reasons I was worried about.
We are exactly where I said we would be in 3 months if we followed through on this. And it's terrible.
*frustrated noises*
But putting me and my feelings aside, I have a serious question for the QMs. What actions could the player-base have taken to prevent this scenario from taking place?
(The situation being Itachi perceives the deal he made with Leaf to plausibly been broken, the leaders of Leaf are unable to do much to stop Akasuki's demands, our family is in easy torture/kidnapping range, we're stuck in the middle of nowhere, we're now missing ninja with minimal to no support or backup. Just all around the worst possible scenario)
As when I look back on the timeline, I'm not seeing a plausible path we could have taken, without extreme push-back from the QMs (meaning we'd have needed to, out of the setting, convince the QMs that Naruto's actions weren't making any sense and have Naruto retroactively act differently) All paths lead to having our family in torture range of Itachi, when we're told to go missing/are found out, no?
Also, any timeline on those dice rolls from the last Dog combat?
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It's currently late enough here that I can't give this the full reply it deserves but in brief, I agree with a lot of the frustration but I think you're mixing up what's IC and what's OOC- I don't think Naruto is or was a mouthpiece for the QMs or otherwise intended to be anything more than someone with nominal authority over us, and obstacles happen in a story including NPCs being unreliable. We could just have defied Naruto earlier/harder and brought our family anyway.
Or to be brief, I am frustrated, but with the characters more than the QMs, if I'm reading you right.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Big mood. We really should've had Mari give Naruto lessons on Deceit
Spector29
It Only Gets Worse From Here
I mean, if we were going to go missing anyway, the context of when and why is still pretty important. It's given me a bit of a chuckle that after all the near misses on going missing we're probably going to go missing anyway, but if I had known we were going to eventually leave regardless I still don't think I would've voted to join Akatsuki or likely voted to leave the first time Naruto offered to set us free. Although I am amused how we got a big talk on how Naruto was raised to be a social spec and folds like fresh laundry the first time we see it used against a non-Leaf ninja.
My interests have been doing cool research and dating cool ladies. We're still going to be doing the research at some* capacity come hell or high water, so I'm content to vote for my favored plan-maker representative and ride the wave of time to weal or woe. (Yes, recent American political news have annihilated my outrage/argument spoons, why do you ask)
My interests have been doing cool research and dating cool ladies. We're still going to be doing the research at some* capacity come hell or high water, so I'm content to vote for my favored plan-maker representative and ride the wave of time to weal or woe. (Yes, recent American political news have annihilated my outrage/argument spoons, why do you ask)
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Yeah I sympathize with some frustrations but I think you have some details off the mark here and that is probably coloring things a bit.
Just to point out something for clarification, the rough sequence of Naruto-interactions on this plot boil down to:
The whiplash here is actually a bit key, in my opinion.
So like, just to summarize:
NARUTO: You should go missing.
HAZOU: I have some ideas about that.
NARUTO: Oh geez man, that sounds more difficult than you just like leaving the village for a while and solving this problem magically. It sounds like you wanna take some of your competent family members along with you... I just don't know if this is gonna work out super well anymore.
HAZOU: Uh, okay.
Fast forward a while.
HAZOU: Yeah so, uh, I might have to abandon my village and 'betray' them with some official permission to do so, in order to stop these crazy psychopath guys.
CANNAI: Well summoner, that is disconcerting, but you do have permission. I support you.
HAZOU: Gee thanks, because honestly this whole thing just wouldn't work if you had strong opinions on this.
Fast forward a bit.
HAZOU: Alrighty, just walking into my living room to have a conversation with Mari about how we can maybe go missing again.
MARI: Hey Hazou, before you say anything, Naruto is here!
NARUTO: Hazou, I just got visited by the good idea fairy. What if you don't go missing at all, what if you just leave Leaf on a research mission or something, and we make a big coverstory and stuff. That way we can stall for time for a while with Akatsuki just in case they notice you're gone.
HAZOU: I'm listening, but how is this better than the original plan where I have a whole squad, we can just go on a big long term mission and stop contacting you or whatever, and then we are missing-presumed dead before we are revealed to be missing-nin?
NARUTO: Yeah, anyways so what do you think of my idea?
Seconds later.
HAZOU: Okay so like even if everyone else is going to be too suspicious or whatever, I need Noburi or this literally doesn't work.
NARUTO: Can he give you chakra over the 7th Path.
HAZOU: ... I guess?
NARUTO: Then just do that then. He can stay here (and continue giving everyone here chakra when they need it) and give you chakra when you need it.
HAZOU: Okay, that works then. But like, y'know, this doesn't work without Noburi.
NARUTO: Right, that's why he's here, where all the chakra (and the other ninja who need training) are.
HAZOU: Right. Anyway that sounds good, I'll hit the road.
Several weeks later
HAZOU: " Hazou, I regret to inform you that shit is fucked. If you cannot erect a forcefield overLeaf a good chunk of the Land of Fire for logistical reasons, or you don't have the 'Turn Akatsuki into Motes of Effervescent Light That Float Away' Rune done yet, then open the next letter."
HAZOU: Hmmm, that doesn't sound good. Alright, whats in this one.
HAZOU: "Dear Hazou, shit is very fucked and my good idea has failed, probably after holding Akatsuki at bay for a while. I really thought you'd be able to turn them into pixie dust or something by now. Anyway, you have to go missing because they're on to us. Don't show up to the Seventh Path anymore or Itachi might kill you. Uhhh, if you get the pixie dust thing or the big forcefield then maybe come back, but once you do come back it kicks off the Riftwar so like, only come back with some good stuff please? Anyway, no contact. You're missing now, bud! Good luck."
HAZOU: ...
HAZOU: ...
HAZOU: What fucking part of 'I need Noburi or this doesn't work.' did this orange jackass not understand? Whatever man, guess we're back to the original plan. Now how the fuck do I get Noburi, Mari, and Yuno out of Leaf..?
- Chapter 632: "Y'know, you could just go missing. Take a small squad of folks of your choosing and go do what you need to do."
- This is indeed a viable option. This isn't presented as an order, just as a card on the table. I don't think it's fair to say this is a railroad.
- I think this idea is a good idea that was very appealing. I think that the QMs were worried about this idea 'taking the air out of the room' or whatever.
- (Some chapter after that). Upon engaging with some practical aspects, he flip flops a lot and seems to be less sure about it.
- This was very confusing to me to read, since it's like the guy almost does a complete 180 after we engage with it immediately. Felt weird.
- Chapter 651: "In Which Naruto Shows Up Minutes Before We Start The 'Go Missing or Not' Vote"
- So, just to clarify, his plan here is very explicitly not for us to go missing. We left on a "research mission" with a bunch of bells and whistles.
- I agree that this was explicitly railroady and the proximity to the actual vote to go missing or not left me feeling very suspension of disbelief broken here. I think several people dropped engagement heavily basically as a result of this chapter happening. Being brutally honest, I would have preferred a "hands off the chess piece" approach here rather than Naruto running in to basically decide the player debate for us.
- It is important to the specifics of this situation that the railroady part was basically "Here hows we can do this without going missing." because of how it juxtaposes with the previous bulletpoints and the last one.
- Chapter 652: "In Which The Research Mission Must Only Have Three People"
- I understand the reasoning given at this time but it wasn't ultra convincing to me. I still don't get it, honestly. From my point of view, Naruto more or less haggled us down to a very specific set of mission parameters because he absolutely needed that much slack to tell Akatsuki to fuck off, and then he completely blows the only part of this that he was supposed to take care of. The very reason that we asked for all of Team Uplift (+ Yuno) at the time is precisely because we thought of the scenario of "What if this goes tits up and we have to go missing for real so that Akatsuki doesn't torture our friends and family to death?".
- The latest chapter.
- Is this railroady? Yeah, I guess.
- My honest reaction to this is probably closer to... "Well, I wish we just packed up our shit and vanished with the gang instead of sitting through 'Naruto decides the player debate for us' if we were just going to do our original plan but with more difficult initial conditions anyway lol".
The whiplash here is actually a bit key, in my opinion.
So like, just to summarize:
NARUTO: You should go missing.
HAZOU: I have some ideas about that.
NARUTO: Oh geez man, that sounds more difficult than you just like leaving the village for a while and solving this problem magically. It sounds like you wanna take some of your competent family members along with you... I just don't know if this is gonna work out super well anymore.
HAZOU: Uh, okay.
Fast forward a while.
HAZOU: Yeah so, uh, I might have to abandon my village and 'betray' them with some official permission to do so, in order to stop these crazy psychopath guys.
CANNAI: Well summoner, that is disconcerting, but you do have permission. I support you.
HAZOU: Gee thanks, because honestly this whole thing just wouldn't work if you had strong opinions on this.
Fast forward a bit.
HAZOU: Alrighty, just walking into my living room to have a conversation with Mari about how we can maybe go missing again.
MARI: Hey Hazou, before you say anything, Naruto is here!
NARUTO: Hazou, I just got visited by the good idea fairy. What if you don't go missing at all, what if you just leave Leaf on a research mission or something, and we make a big coverstory and stuff. That way we can stall for time for a while with Akatsuki just in case they notice you're gone.
HAZOU: I'm listening, but how is this better than the original plan where I have a whole squad, we can just go on a big long term mission and stop contacting you or whatever, and then we are missing-presumed dead before we are revealed to be missing-nin?
NARUTO: Yeah, anyways so what do you think of my idea?
Seconds later.
HAZOU: Okay so like even if everyone else is going to be too suspicious or whatever, I need Noburi or this literally doesn't work.
NARUTO: Can he give you chakra over the 7th Path.
HAZOU: ... I guess?
NARUTO: Then just do that then. He can stay here (and continue giving everyone here chakra when they need it) and give you chakra when you need it.
HAZOU: Okay, that works then. But like, y'know, this doesn't work without Noburi.
NARUTO: Right, that's why he's here, where all the chakra (and the other ninja who need training) are.
HAZOU: Right. Anyway that sounds good, I'll hit the road.
Several weeks later
HAZOU: " Hazou, I regret to inform you that shit is fucked. If you cannot erect a forcefield over
HAZOU: Hmmm, that doesn't sound good. Alright, whats in this one.
HAZOU: "Dear Hazou, shit is very fucked and my good idea has failed, probably after holding Akatsuki at bay for a while. I really thought you'd be able to turn them into pixie dust or something by now. Anyway, you have to go missing because they're on to us. Don't show up to the Seventh Path anymore or Itachi might kill you. Uhhh, if you get the pixie dust thing or the big forcefield then maybe come back, but once you do come back it kicks off the Riftwar so like, only come back with some good stuff please? Anyway, no contact. You're missing now, bud! Good luck."
HAZOU: ...
HAZOU: ...
HAZOU: What fucking part of 'I need Noburi or this doesn't work.' did this orange jackass not understand? Whatever man, guess we're back to the original plan. Now how the fuck do I get Noburi, Mari, and Yuno out of Leaf..?
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Yeah that's a good summary of events, my perspective matches pretty closely. I'm less certain on the railroading bits since it seems logical for Naruto to have opinions like he did but I honestly expected better from Naruto with how much him being reared to be Hokage Apparent got gassed up. How is the guy this bad, did he actually get suborned by Itachi contact or what? No, can't be, even if he had we got confirmation Itachi died at the BotG and any previous control he had would've lapsed. Don't think Itachi got chances since then.
- Location
- France
@Inferno Vulpix what's the CR situation if we don't bother with prep days ? Just 2 research cycles, nothing else ? Or just 2 cycles + notes ?
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
The only thing we have to do on prep days research wise is summon up some Shadow Clones and have them do theory work all day so this can be done with Hazou's personal chakra reserves on any given prep day.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
So, let's talk exfiltration details. We can do one of three things:
I can't see a way for Option 1 to work. The difference between Options 2 and 3 comes down to what threat profiles we're trying to ward against. Or, in other words, what we think Itachi will do as a response to our visible behaviour.
For instance, suppose we take Option 2 but Itachi is still hanging around Leaf and starts staring intensely at Noburi the moment he comes back. He cracks, the secret is spilled, and Itachi promptly takes action to ensure we do not receive the reinforcements we requested.
(If Itachi is still hanging around Leaf, sneaking intel past him would be quite tricky. We could hand Noburi an encoded letter, but Itachi could just yoink it and demand someone translate it. Even if he couldn't, the mere presence of a letter likely makes him suspicious enough to hinder exfiltration. We could tell Noburi an encoded message, that even he does not know the true meaning of until he relays it to Mari, much like Naruto's "playing around in the sand" codephrase, but I do not know if we credibly have such a system set up at this point in time.)
Option 3 naturally comes with the followup questions of "how long do we wait?" and "what do we do in the meantime?" We could maybe squeeze a few more days of refills out of Noburi by saying we're on our way back home, but the gains there seem marginal, probably insufficient to even complete one research cycle. So it's likely best to just cut contact immediately and wait the specified amount of time before contacting Noburi again.
It may seem like Option 3 is trivially better than 2: the longer we wait, the less likely Noburi will be under harsh monitoring, the more likely we can safely get Team Uplift out. However, it adds more risks. In addition to cratering our research speed for the duration of time that we spend waiting, we risk a Crow reaching Toad, allowing Itachi to show up during the meeting itself or otherwise learn that a meeting happened and respond accordingly.
We could perhaps subvert this by showing up when Noburi isn't present and asking the Toad Sages to relay a message to Noburi when he next appears. The cost of waiting still remains. Do we wait a week? Two? A month? Do we have the means to send a covert message to Mari that even Noburi doesn't realize is a coded message?
We could also perhaps bet on Noburi avoiding Itachi's attention long enough to escape. Let's say... have the Toad Sages ask Noburi to meet them again at an odd hour, in the dead of night when Itachi is least likely to be monitoring Noburi, then we meet Noburi there and relay the situation, then Noburi races back to Mari and Yuno and wakes them up and gets them out of Leaf before sunrise. That could work, probably, on relatively short notice. The Toad Sages could make up some nonsense excuse about something relating to his training, Noburi wouldn't suspect a thing until the moment of. It leaves remarkably little time to set our affairs in order before leaving the Goketsu Clan to its fate, but Mari could maybe send the right letters to the right people to get at least something done in the wake of their departure.
- We can go immediately no-contact, and trust Noburi to make his way to us somehow(???)
- We can make our next scheduled meetup with Noburi, and communicate something through that channel.
- We can skip some unspecified numbers of meetups with Noburi, then show up some point in the future to communicate our plans.
I can't see a way for Option 1 to work. The difference between Options 2 and 3 comes down to what threat profiles we're trying to ward against. Or, in other words, what we think Itachi will do as a response to our visible behaviour.
For instance, suppose we take Option 2 but Itachi is still hanging around Leaf and starts staring intensely at Noburi the moment he comes back. He cracks, the secret is spilled, and Itachi promptly takes action to ensure we do not receive the reinforcements we requested.
(If Itachi is still hanging around Leaf, sneaking intel past him would be quite tricky. We could hand Noburi an encoded letter, but Itachi could just yoink it and demand someone translate it. Even if he couldn't, the mere presence of a letter likely makes him suspicious enough to hinder exfiltration. We could tell Noburi an encoded message, that even he does not know the true meaning of until he relays it to Mari, much like Naruto's "playing around in the sand" codephrase, but I do not know if we credibly have such a system set up at this point in time.)
Option 3 naturally comes with the followup questions of "how long do we wait?" and "what do we do in the meantime?" We could maybe squeeze a few more days of refills out of Noburi by saying we're on our way back home, but the gains there seem marginal, probably insufficient to even complete one research cycle. So it's likely best to just cut contact immediately and wait the specified amount of time before contacting Noburi again.
It may seem like Option 3 is trivially better than 2: the longer we wait, the less likely Noburi will be under harsh monitoring, the more likely we can safely get Team Uplift out. However, it adds more risks. In addition to cratering our research speed for the duration of time that we spend waiting, we risk a Crow reaching Toad, allowing Itachi to show up during the meeting itself or otherwise learn that a meeting happened and respond accordingly.
We could perhaps subvert this by showing up when Noburi isn't present and asking the Toad Sages to relay a message to Noburi when he next appears. The cost of waiting still remains. Do we wait a week? Two? A month? Do we have the means to send a covert message to Mari that even Noburi doesn't realize is a coded message?
We could also perhaps bet on Noburi avoiding Itachi's attention long enough to escape. Let's say... have the Toad Sages ask Noburi to meet them again at an odd hour, in the dead of night when Itachi is least likely to be monitoring Noburi, then we meet Noburi there and relay the situation, then Noburi races back to Mari and Yuno and wakes them up and gets them out of Leaf before sunrise. That could work, probably, on relatively short notice. The Toad Sages could make up some nonsense excuse about something relating to his training, Noburi wouldn't suspect a thing until the moment of. It leaves remarkably little time to set our affairs in order before leaving the Goketsu Clan to its fate, but Mari could maybe send the right letters to the right people to get at least something done in the wake of their departure.
One week before first missed check in.
Tsunade will want to leave the city as soon as she is done with Noburi. Could try sending her a message to pass to him through Slug, tell him to leave with her.
Do we need to go back to sink our old research islands? What traces did we leave?
Why are we worried about communicating with Noburi specifically?
He's right there. Let's just tell him what we want instead of jumping through Itachi's hoops.
Or are we assuming that, after telling Hazo that Satan walked into his house and threatened everyone, he left without another word? He can't be that stupid, right? Did I miss something, or am I going crazy?
He's right there. Let's just tell him what we want instead of jumping through Itachi's hoops.
Or are we assuming that, after telling Hazo that Satan walked into his house and threatened everyone, he left without another word? He can't be that stupid, right? Did I miss something, or am I going crazy?
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- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
[X] Training Plan: Disciple of the Beyond
[X] Interlude: Disciple of the Beyond
[X] Project: Omnicule
[X] Interlude: Disciple of the Beyond
[X] Project: Omnicule
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
This isn't true? It's a net boost to the numbers.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I initially parsed this as "DoB is worth less than SSA (for Primordial Sealing)", which is not true (we get more number immediately by buying DoB and the buff stunt for it right now). I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue if that's not what you meant.
- Location
- Italy
The first question that comes to mind if we're going full missing-nin is: "Do we have a way to deal with Hidan's bloodsense/luck nonsense finding us?", considering Kagome, from what i can undestand, didn't approve of our "remain in the sky all day researching outside of Hidan's range", currently what i see in the missing-nin path is "Hidan and the Akatsuki find us and we die/get captured/interrogated".
Considering what we know of his powers we can reasonably assume he will find himself nearby our base of operation, therefore the minimum we'll need is a way to deactivate his abilities so his bloodsense doesn't activate and he goes "Well, they aren't here, they are probably on another path".
At the moment from what i see we have a variety of choices in front of us, from simply inviting Itachi to a tea with Cannai(Or hell, let Cannai talk to Itachi) and go "Yeah, we're doing weapon research on various things, amongs which how to stop you people in case you decide to murder me or Leaf (under Naruto's orders), surprisingly i'm not having much success trying to find a way to defeat S-rank ninjas and no, i'm not researching the rift, because i'm not an idiot. For everything else on what Leaf is doing go talk to Naruto" , to returning to Leaf to go missing.
The problem is that whatever we choose, we have peculiar problems that needs to be addressed before we do it(Hidan's bloodsense, Itachi genjutsu-ing us, or Akatsuki taking people we love hostage) or we're done for.
Considering what we know of his powers we can reasonably assume he will find himself nearby our base of operation, therefore the minimum we'll need is a way to deactivate his abilities so his bloodsense doesn't activate and he goes "Well, they aren't here, they are probably on another path".
At the moment from what i see we have a variety of choices in front of us, from simply inviting Itachi to a tea with Cannai(Or hell, let Cannai talk to Itachi) and go "Yeah, we're doing weapon research on various things, amongs which how to stop you people in case you decide to murder me or Leaf (under Naruto's orders), surprisingly i'm not having much success trying to find a way to defeat S-rank ninjas and no, i'm not researching the rift, because i'm not an idiot. For everything else on what Leaf is doing go talk to Naruto" , to returning to Leaf to go missing.
The problem is that whatever we choose, we have peculiar problems that needs to be addressed before we do it(Hidan's bloodsense, Itachi genjutsu-ing us, or Akatsuki taking people we love hostage) or we're done for.
Spector29
It Only Gets Worse From Here
I'm sometimes reminded of reading the...penultimate chapter, I believe, of HPMOR where the author tells the reviewers to solve Harry's current predicament or he'll write the Bad Ending. In some ways, that's pretty much how all Quests work as a genre. However, it's always felt very high stakes in MfD, and I think that for me it's because I've been reading since I graduated high school. I'm sure I'll be back in this fear-flavored nostalgia when we actually do the Riftwar, but for now I want to give props to everyone who's continuing the hard work of planning a way out of this never-ending game of Whack-A-Crisis. We've got a lot of brainpower in this thread, so I'm confident we'll come up with an answer. If it's not good enough? I guess I'm happy to have been following along, even if only at the edges.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Regarding evading pursuit:
First, we cannot deal with them if they find us. Before, it was possible that we get a visit from Hidan alone, or from Hidan and one of the other moron Akatsuki (i. e., Sasori or Deidara) who happened to be paired up with him when Hidan personally got the idea to catch up with us. This group we maybe could have handled by a clever enough application of our extant runes and quickly spun social schemes.
Now? No. We'll get a visit from Hidan and one of the competent Akatsuki (Itachi/Kisame/Konan, likely not Konan), and they'd know that we're guilty and need to be killed. Social schemes won't work, anti-Hidan countermeasures won't work. We can't allow them to get within, like, 50 km of us.
Second, Hidan's blood sense is basically irrelevant. According to Orochimaru, the range is only a few miles. If the Akatsuki's search party gets to within a few miles of us, they won't need Hidan's blood sense to locate us: all of {Itachi, Kisame, Konan} have their own vast sensory abilities (Crows patroling the skies, raw sensory abilities, and being a vast chakra entity bolstered by Paper Clones, respectively). Looking at it from another angle: narrowing down our location to a volume of several miles is the hard part of the search problem they're facing, and if they manage it, we've already screwed up. And Hidan's blood sense likely only becomes useful after the hard problem is solved, and its usefulness is marginal.
The actual problem is Hidan's Jashin-boosted luck, which might make solving the aforementioned "hard" problem easy as well. But while his "tactical-scale" blood-tracking complements this strategic-scale ability well, I don't think we have any reason to believe that the two abilities actually interact, right? I. e., that it's easier for Hidan to luck into finding targets whose blood he knows? It might work this way, but if I understand correctly, the blood-tracking is just a standard Kitkat Clan ability. Maybe leveled to S-rank, but likely not even boosted by Jashin.
As such, I don't think we need to have the debate about swapping out our blood. It's missing the point.
Now, the hard problem on our end is: how do we foil Hidan's Jashin-boosted luck?
Well, firstly, it's not actually clear to what extent it's a problem. It might not actually function all that well.
But if it does...
I don't have any immediate ideas besides "outbid Hidan regarding Jashin favoritism". Jashin (or whatever entity) already favoured us over Hidan when we last had our contest. Let's go find those pirate lords and sink their vessels in His name? It might work.
First, we cannot deal with them if they find us. Before, it was possible that we get a visit from Hidan alone, or from Hidan and one of the other moron Akatsuki (i. e., Sasori or Deidara) who happened to be paired up with him when Hidan personally got the idea to catch up with us. This group we maybe could have handled by a clever enough application of our extant runes and quickly spun social schemes.
Now? No. We'll get a visit from Hidan and one of the competent Akatsuki (Itachi/Kisame/Konan, likely not Konan), and they'd know that we're guilty and need to be killed. Social schemes won't work, anti-Hidan countermeasures won't work. We can't allow them to get within, like, 50 km of us.
Second, Hidan's blood sense is basically irrelevant. According to Orochimaru, the range is only a few miles. If the Akatsuki's search party gets to within a few miles of us, they won't need Hidan's blood sense to locate us: all of {Itachi, Kisame, Konan} have their own vast sensory abilities (Crows patroling the skies, raw sensory abilities, and being a vast chakra entity bolstered by Paper Clones, respectively). Looking at it from another angle: narrowing down our location to a volume of several miles is the hard part of the search problem they're facing, and if they manage it, we've already screwed up. And Hidan's blood sense likely only becomes useful after the hard problem is solved, and its usefulness is marginal.
The actual problem is Hidan's Jashin-boosted luck, which might make solving the aforementioned "hard" problem easy as well. But while his "tactical-scale" blood-tracking complements this strategic-scale ability well, I don't think we have any reason to believe that the two abilities actually interact, right? I. e., that it's easier for Hidan to luck into finding targets whose blood he knows? It might work this way, but if I understand correctly, the blood-tracking is just a standard Kitkat Clan ability. Maybe leveled to S-rank, but likely not even boosted by Jashin.
As such, I don't think we need to have the debate about swapping out our blood. It's missing the point.
Now, the hard problem on our end is: how do we foil Hidan's Jashin-boosted luck?
Well, firstly, it's not actually clear to what extent it's a problem. It might not actually function all that well.
But if it does...
I don't have any immediate ideas besides "outbid Hidan regarding Jashin favoritism". Jashin (or whatever entity) already favoured us over Hidan when we last had our contest. Let's go find those pirate lords and sink their vessels in His name? It might work.
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