Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto 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
Hmm. I'm not nearly that confident that there's only one pair there; if they've gone so far as to build a fortress, I'd expect them to have at least two pairs there if not all six - though that's including whoever they have exploring the rift, if it's open. Kisame might not be good for fighting after having his chakra used to open the Rift, and I really doubt Itachi would skip the event that might let him get Pain back, so if they haven't opened it yet my guess is it's Sasori, Kisame, Itachi, and at least one of {Hidan, Deidara, Konan}. I also think the chance of Deidara being there is probably higher than you estimated, since he provides aerial support - I'd put him on par with Hidan.
If they have opened the Rift and are exploring it ... hard to say, since we don't know how the chakra drain works. Kisame would be my top guess for exploring, since Samehada might protect him from the chakra drain, but then again that risks them being unable to open the Rift if it closes with him on the wrong side and he's too low on chakra (if they can't coordinate across it). Almost certainly not Konan or Deidara because of their dependence on drainable chakra (Deidara for flight and constructs, Konan for existence), not Sasori because we know seals get drained and he might also just die. maybe Hidan because Jashin stuff, maybe Itachi because of Sharingan stuff but putting both Itachi and Kisame in the afterlife would be pretty dicey and it's not necessarily the case that the Sharingan would help. My best guess is Kisame plus Hidan plus a bunch of Jashin cultists exploring and the other four all guarding, but low confidence on that.
Part of that is that if a pair has gone through by the time we get there, only one pair remains at the rift site. Mostly it's that not grouping up is their normal methodology and I kind of think they don't actually work together very well without Pain at the head of things.
Arguably it'd be smart to have one summoner on-site and one off, so they can quickly get in contact if need be, but other considerations could easily outweigh that.
The part about them not actually working that well together is a good point, and one I hadn't considered. However, if they have the rift open, it's weighed against the risk of someone doing exactly what we plan to do and assaulting the rift site, trapping the (hypothetical) exploring pair inside. You don't need superweapons or a multi-village alliance to stand a good chance of beating one Akatsuki pair, even with Jashin-cultist backup.
... Though I suppose they probably think their fortress will protect them from that, actually. So maybe they would leave only one pair on this side, and as you suggest have a summoner on-site and one off-site to allow for quick communication with the absent pair. It would mean that neither Itachi nor Kisame could be on the exploring team though, and Sasori/Deidara/Konan can't go, so only Hidan would be able to go in and I'm not at all sure the others would trust him to go in without oversight. They probably only have Jashinists exploring, in that case, rather than going in themselves.
Edit: Also possible that I'm wrong about Deidara not being able to go in - we didn't have the chance to experiment much with the afterlife's chakra drain, we don't know that it would affect Deidara's constructs, and he'd be able to cover a lot more ground than the others if he can keep them together.
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm being less clear than I should be.
My position is this:
If Orochimaru has not decided to engage Leaf, we are not going to be able to change his mind.
If Orochimaru wins the fight with the Akatsuki, and if Leaf is not present, he will take the Rift wherever he wants. We will, again, not be able to change his mind. I expect that if he did not involve Leaf initially, he will opt to remain missing, citing concerns about Naruto's oversight and the prevailing attitude towards death as a part of the natural order.
If he allows us to join him, he will place significant constraints and conditions on our research and general actions. I expect he will demand our Summoning Scroll at a minimum to ensure we don't communicate with Leaf. If he does not allow us to join him or we opt not to join him, we're not going to see him or the Rift again unless he makes a deliberate decision to let us.
Unless he is acting cartoonishly evil, we will not bail upon meeting him. I expect him to have a clear message about the unacceptability of the Akatsuki taking the Rift and to focus on that as opposed to discussing his future plans.
I further expect that if he's decided not to involve Leaf he's going to make sure that we can't blow it for him - either by moving on the Akatsuki immediately or by taking some other measure to make sure we can't get in touch with Leaf fast enough to make a difference.
All of this is to say that if we go straight to Orochimaru, it all comes down to whether or not he decided it was a good idea to get in touch with Leaf. If he didn't, then the possible outcomes narrow to 'the Akatsuki own the Rift' and 'Orochimaru owns the Rift'.
I don't feel like I can predict what call he would have made very accurately. My point is that we're surrendering a lot of agency. Again, I think this is the best possible option, but it's not something I'm seeing discussed.
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Yeah our choices suck and committing to a specific choice means we don't do other choices, there's not much point dwelling on it. We shrimply have to ball.
He can't do this. Literally cannot. He's an essie not a god and if we set up a dead man's switch he literally cannot do shit about it.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Can you outline your proposal for a dead man's switch that will reach Leaf before Orochimaru has time to launch an assault on the Rift? Right now we have no way to get in touch with them quickly, and a dead man's switch isn't going to change that.
The last two times you've responded to me have left me with the impression you haven't read what I've said very carefully or put much thought into responding. In this case, the only way I can really make sense of your response is that you skimmed over the words 'fast enough to make a difference'. Can you calibrate me?
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- Location
- Yes.
I will observe that for Orochimaru to convince us to not contact Leaf and/or deactivate any deadmans switches, he needs only provide sufficiently convincing evidence to us that Naruto has been compromised/Akatsuki is in Leaf. Which, uh, I think he can do, even if it's untrue.
I don't think he even needs evidence, actually; I'd take Oro's word that Leaf is compromised more-or-less at face value if he can provide a convincing account of how it happened that explains why e.g. Tsunade didn't object to it. If Itachi actually did show up and mind-control Naruto, would we expect Oro to be able to provide physical evidence?
That said, I think it's extremely likely that Oro intends to link up with Leaf if he possibly can. Even with runecrafting, even as an S-ranker, attacking an Akatsuki fortress solo - though I suppose he might not be solo? We saw he had missing-nin minions back from when he abducted Ren, if that was canon - would be an extremely risky endeavour, and I don't think Oro would do it just for the marginal benefit of having the Rift himself instead of under Leaf's control. Like, the Rift isn't actually that helpful to him - he's immortal, he doesn't care about anyone else enough to want to resurrect them, the best thing he could get out of it is to resurrect and mind-control a bunch of S-rankers and that requires him to actually be able to mind-control S-rankers, which is not at all certain. It would help him with biosealing research to be able to reuse subjects over and over, sure, but that's just a convenience.
To put it another way: if he was certain of being able to assault the Rift alone, he wouldn't have asked for our help, he would have just done it. It's possible that he intends to ask for help from Leaf only if we don't show - but even with us, success is not guaranteed. I think even with us helping, Oro probably doesn't care about having sole access to the Rift enough to not involve Leaf if doing so is possible.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've said this already but I think for matters of worldsaving we don't need to worry about Oro fucking around until his skin isn't on the line anymore. He takes that shit pretty serious. The only way I see him going full defector is if Akatsuki is already neutralized as a threat, personally
Which may well happen after this, don't get me wrong. But I don't think he soloed them offscreen
Sure, we split the party, Mari and Hazou proceed to Rice, the rest of TU takes a position <1 day from Leaf hiding in a skytower (as close as they can get).
If Hazou fails to make contact after his meeting their orders are to make contact with Naruto and inform him that Orochimaru is launching an attack on O'uzu, has refused to loop Leaf in, and has incapacitated Hazou when he went to bargin with Oro.
Since Oro is further from O'uzu than Leaf, Leaf has time to respond. Now this may be only hours, but they can get there first.
[X] Training Plan (Kei & Snowflake): Maximizing RW
Passing messages to Kagome via Arachnid, I assume - don't think we have summon relays set up with any of the others? (Want to check what you have in mind.)
Kagome or Noburi. We have Dogs at both places.
Are the Horizon Chasers still there? We told them they were free to travel again - are they still in Toad and just not near the Toad Sages, and does Noburi have contracts nearby?
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[X] Hazō Training Plan: More Chakra MAX
[X] Training Plan (Kei & Snowflake): Maximizing RW
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They are still in Toad last we heard. I believe they took the oaths.
- Will we want Orochimaru to change our blood to hide from Hidan?
- Use our blood as a diversion?
- Will we attack the rift together split up, draw some members of Akatsuki away?
- Can fire RERs from in TR140 if it does not leak TRs to Snuncle.
- Hold Rain hostage to keep Konan out of the fight?
- Would she take Orochimaru's word to revive Pain when he controls the rift?
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I'm a bit surprised that Noburi did so much (and subjected himself to so much memory divergence) on his first Shadow Clone try. I remember that Hazō was made to lay on the ground and immediately dispel his clone after summoning it. And that Kei was supposed to do similar but didn't. I assume that's because Noburi's Resolve is so much higher than theirs was at this point? Still, I'd expect the reintegration pain to be novel to him the first time around, even if he has no real trouble withstanding it.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Looking over Stompy's protoplan...
In short, I don't think we can fool them here, and we probably shouldn't even try.
(Also, I feel like we shouldn't be committing ourselves to Superchillers until we've talked with Oro and know what our odds look like. I'm of the opinion that we should only go for them if our odds look bad without, which we cannot determine beforehand.)
Edit: hmmm, looking back from the end of the plan, it seems like the intention here is to only get halfway through the research and then put it on ice until and unless we need it? I suppose that's fair, though we run the risk of accidentally completing it in one go. And I guess, if we imagine we can't move out immediately since it'd take a day to put our affairs in order (i.e. the rest of the plan), it doesn't really cost us time. If that's what you're going for, I think I can agree with it.
In a similar band of worrying, "when we know more in a few days" might give the wrong impression in worlds where, a few days from now, we're already at O'Uzu and about to fight. I wouldn't want to have Cannai falsely expect to have more time than he does to be ready for the battle.
That is to say, if we want to actually keep the secret we'll need a more precise secrecy plan. A way to convey enough about it to satisfy without giving him what he needs to understand and replicate it. I don't off the top of my head know what that should look like, but I certainly don't think Hazoupilot is up to the task.
But overall, taking into account these criticisms, I like the general thrust of the plan. I would also like to add in a line about splitting the party so we can have quick comms with Leaf, but I think this covers all the bases we need it to.
No shot this works, right? Like, Kei got upset at how WMD-y our Storm rune was and by our own admission we didn't even think it'd be that bad. Right as a sudden impending deadline strikes us we go off to do an unexplained super-destructive rune that we hadn't seen fit to do before yet also don't think will take so long to interfere with the deadline. She's gonna figure it out, or Mari if she doesn't, or she'd just start worrying from the simple fact that a rune Hazou expects to be especially destructive is also likely to be a WMD.
In short, I don't think we can fool them here, and we probably shouldn't even try.
Speaking of, even though this is only one day of waiting, I'm a bit leery about it. How is this more to our advantage than meeting Oro ASAP and then taking a day to research if he confirms we have that much time? It feels like it's hedging against Orochimaru being stupid and pushing us to attack earlier even though we can spare a day to do the research. In other scenarios (we don't have a spare day, Oro sees the merit in letting us research for a day, etc.) it seems like a pretty straight loss.
(Also, I feel like we shouldn't be committing ourselves to Superchillers until we've talked with Oro and know what our odds look like. I'm of the opinion that we should only go for them if our odds look bad without, which we cannot determine beforehand.)
Edit: hmmm, looking back from the end of the plan, it seems like the intention here is to only get halfway through the research and then put it on ice until and unless we need it? I suppose that's fair, though we run the risk of accidentally completing it in one go. And I guess, if we imagine we can't move out immediately since it'd take a day to put our affairs in order (i.e. the rest of the plan), it doesn't really cost us time. If that's what you're going for, I think I can agree with it.
I'm uncertain that we should do a test summon here. Not wholly against, given that the travel time to Rice and then O'Uzu probably leaves enough time to recover with good treatment, but I'm not certain. If the numbers work out, it should be fine, but if doing a test summon now would risk delaying the assault in worlds where it turns out we don't have any spare days, we might want to hold off.
In a similar band of worrying, "when we know more in a few days" might give the wrong impression in worlds where, a few days from now, we're already at O'Uzu and about to fight. I wouldn't want to have Cannai falsely expect to have more time than he does to be ready for the battle.
What, exactly, is this referring to? The radar rune? Just the rift runes? This could probably be clearer as something like "All of our plans are shaky without further inventions to synergize with", which also feels like it casts Hazou in a bit of a better light.
Does this need to be said? I'm not sure what practical consideration it's really referring to. Is it "Hazou can't just YOLO a bunch of his RER2 runes because he might run out of FP halfway"? If so, pointing out our lack of substrate doesn't seem super salient, and we could reframe the line a bit better as "We still need to be careful when crafting our best runes, so it might take some time" or somesuch.
I agree with the spirit, but, no shot this works, right? The being vague part, to be clear. Oro's going to very reasonably need to know the specs of our weapon, what kind of devastation it'll deliver and how to plan around its deployment. We won't be able to keep to a "maximally vague" standard, and odds are if he does Intimidate us into giving up secrets we'll end up giving him enough pieces to figure out the insights we're trying to keep from him.
That is to say, if we want to actually keep the secret we'll need a more precise secrecy plan. A way to convey enough about it to satisfy without giving him what he needs to understand and replicate it. I don't off the top of my head know what that should look like, but I certainly don't think Hazoupilot is up to the task.
But overall, taking into account these criticisms, I like the general thrust of the plan. I would also like to add in a line about splitting the party so we can have quick comms with Leaf, but I think this covers all the bases we need it to.
- Location
- Liverpool
We're still waiting on roles and results and mapping from the past 2 (objective) months before we can figure out SC XP and the like, right? Not that I think it'll make a big difference to the overall plan, but we should probably think about what we want to spend that on as well. Though I'm all for getting CR to 40 and/or increasing athletics as high as we can get it so we we're less likely die to incidental stray AoE.
(Though after this, if we survive, I REALLY want to get Minato sealing. And not just because it may be really helpful if we go explore the rift.)
(Though after this, if we survive, I REALLY want to get Minato sealing. And not just because it may be really helpful if we go explore the rift.)
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I'm not sure that runecrafting in general doesn't
