Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

"Welcome to my briefing on runic capabilities and how they will shape the future of ninja warfare," Hazō began. "We brought cookies."

Mari gave a polite bow of her head as she finished setting out the tea, cookies, and finger sandwiches filled with fish and cucumber. They were being displayed on an incongruously elegant table with its feet carved into dragon claws and its top covered in white linen. The crusts of the sandwiches had been cut off. Tsunade promptly took one of the sandwiches, nibbled it, and then took four more. Orochimaru raised an eyebrow and she shot him a 'what, they're small' shrug.

"Crafting a runic blank takes several hours, infusing it takes up to half an hour," Hazō continued, ignoring the byplay. "I can run enough Shadow Clones to create nine Remote Explosive Runes at once. We call them 'RERs' for short. They're heavy as shit, as you can see." He gestured to the example blank that sat next to them, a twisting, swirling mass of gleaming crystal shaped like a ship's prow with bowsprit extended. The thing was large enough to lie down on and it weighed more than a loaded wagon and its oxen.

"Runes cannot be moved once they are infused, at least not at a speed that is relevant to human endeavors," Hazō continued, nervousness about talking to the Sannin making his words come out in an overly formal, almost Kei-like cadence. "They have a range of about a mile and a quarter and they don't need line of sight, although they can't shoot through solid walls. I'm assuming that we make them outside of their operational range to reduce opportunity for discovery. That leaves us with two questions: how do we transport the blanks once they are made, and how far out from Akatsuki's base do I make them?

Tsunade studied the blank for a moment, then set her sandwich down and wiped her mouth with the provided napkin. She stood up, crossed to the blank, and squatted down next to it, wedging her fingers under it with some effort.

Hazō watched in bemusement.

Tsunade took a deep breath and let it out as she lifted. Every muscle in her body went taut, the blue seal on her forehead shone like a star, tendons stood out as she strained. The force of the effort rammed her feet an inch into the earth before a spiderweb of chakra threads spread out from her soles, dispersing the force and preventing her from sinking deeper.

The blank tipped up, slowly.

She raised it until it was on the edge of tipping over, then lowered it back down and returned to the table, absentmindedly dusting off her hands.

"I can carry them," she said, taking her seat and picking up her sandwich again. "It'll need to be in pairs for balance, so I'll assign two Shadow Clones per blank." She took a bite, chewed, thoughtfully, and swallowed. "Also, carrying shit over distance is harder than lifting it. Three miles is probably the limit if I want to be able to fight afterwards."

"Okay then," Hazō said after a moment. "Let's say two and a half to give some leeway?" He looked around at the others; Tsunade rolled her eyes, Orochimaru and Mari nodded.

"That brings us to my next concern: discovery," Hazō said. "If I'm interrupted during a runic infusion, the infusion will fail and the results will be...bad."

"Worse than a seal failure, I'm presuming?" Tsunade asked.

"Having never caused a runic failure, I can't be completely certain," Hazō said carefully. "However...yes. Way, waaaay worse. I'm sure you've seen enough seal research to know that there's always minor, generally harmless, failures during the process. When I do seal research I have gotten things like nasty smells, an area twenty yards across where the air was slightly warmer than the surroundings, moss appearing on my skin, and talking chakra constructs that dissolve after ten minutes. The equivalent issues during runic research have involved lava fountains that may still be in effect, a momentary blast of wind powerful enough to fling me ten feet, and a pillar of fire fifty feet tall and ten feet wide that was so hot it was uncomfortable to be within fifty feet of it."

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like a rather visible marker for your location, nephew."

"No, it's fine. The fire pillar lasted just over eleven hours before dissipating on its own. We left the next day, and we've made sure to destroy all the runes and blanks that we've left behind." Destroy or bury, but he wasn't going to mention the second part.

"Anyway, my point is that those are the type of mostly-safe and mostly-controlled failures that you get from working with runic prototypes. A full-power rune failing its infusion? We don't want any part of that, which means that you need to ensure that I am not disturbed once I start infusing. Especially since there are going to be nine or ten of me doing infusions at the same time. If I am knocked out, all my shadow clones pop and their infusions fail. If one of my clones pops, even if we get staggeringly lucky and the failure is completely harmless, there is a chance that the psychic shock of the clone sickness will cause other clones to pop or me to pass out. That would be, as we say in the biz, bad."

Tsunade snorted.

Hazō studied the two Sannin for a moment. "With respect, for the time that I am doing those infusions, I am the most important part of this mission and the first priority needs to be protecting me at all costs. Our assault plans need to be shaped around that fact. Agreed?"

Tsunade looked to Orochimaru. The Snake Sannin nodded, his face serious. She nodded back and turned to Hazō again.

"Good enough. So, we saunter really sneaky-like over towards the bad guys and stop about three miles away—"

"Two and a half," Orochimaru said, looking innocently at the nails he was trimming with a blade of green medical chakra.

Tsunade gave her battle brother a sour glance and continued. "Two and a half miles away. Hazō and his clones do the finger-wiggly thing and make the blanks. I lug them to about a mile away from the target, the assault group in tow along with Hazō's shadow clones. The Hazō clones infuse the things and then immediately pop to reduce the number of people on the field while we're doing final prep. Fewer bodies, fewer chances of being spotted."

"I'm afraid you'll need my clones to activate the runes," Hazō said, keeping his face as straight as possible.

"Truly? How fascinating. Please, dear nephew, explain why you are the only one capable of triggering a rune."

"Seriously. Show us how, we'll do it, brat. We don't need to be tripping over a passel of chūnin clones."

"First, special jōnin, not chūnin. Second, firing the remote explosive runes isn't a simple thing. I can't teach it quickly, so I'll need to be the one taking the shot."

In point of fact, he needed to be the one taking the shot because there was no way in all the Paths known and unknown that he was going to allow this battle to happen without him. He had given up everything to be where he stood and he was not going to be brushed aside and sent off to the kids' table while the grownups played with his toys. Sure, Hazō was too young to hang in a fight between the Sannin and their peers, but when Jiraiya was eventually fished out of the afterlife, Hazō was going to be able to say that he had made a difference in the battle that saved him.

The two Sannin stared hard at Hazō. He held himself as straight as possible and met their gazes. Beside him, Mari showed only the cool composure of an experienced infiltrator watching an op right on the edge of going south.



"You are so full of shit," Tsunade said. "Trying to grab some glory for yourself?"

"Well said, sister. You are not nearly the liar you think yourself, nephew. If this is your best effort then I am disappointed in both you and your teacher." He looked down his nose at Mari.

Mari offered only an easy smile and a shrug. "What can I say? He's way too honest for the likes of me to help."

Hazō forced his jaw to unclench. "That's an uncharitable way to put it, Lady Tsunade. Yes, fine, I could teach you to activate the runes quickly enough and I could explain the aiming process and how to time the shots for best effect. Despite that, I have the most experience aiming and firing them and we need the first attacks to hit in exactly the right pattern for maximum effectiveness. So yes, I need to be the one taking the shot."

The mountain began to shimmer into existence around them as Tsunade's anger mounted. "Look, brat—"

Invisible fire wrapped itself around Hazō, burning away the in-pressing stone. Snakes glinted on the edge of visibility, swatting the mountain back into unreality. Tsunade twitched slightly in surprise, her eyes narrowing at Orochimaru and then Mari.

"Stand down, Sunny. Let the boy have his fun. It is true that he has more experience firing the things than anyone—unless you have spent time practicing with them? No? I didn't think so. Nor have I. He will either be better at it than we are or at least no worse. We shall need every tiny advantage for this battle and the extra risk his presence creates should be acceptable. If on the day we discover that it is not then we will revise this decision in more direct fashion."

"Revise it with my fucking fist."

"I believe that is what I said, yes. Granted, I have far too much couth and education to be as...plainspoken as you. Yet still the point was made." He turned to Hazō. "Very well, boy. You shall have your chance to raise a weapon on the day. What next?"

Wow. That had actually worked?! Cool!

"Um...right. After the RERs are fired, the assault group blitzes the target. The RERs should have cleared any traps from the immediate area of the fortress, as well as splotched any lookouts and outside guards. It may or may not have demolished the fortress itself, depending on whether it's reinforced with chakra effects or not." He grimaced. "Well, if they built it really heavy then maybe it would survive, but that's unlikely. I'll be overlapping the RER blasts so that the explosions reinforce one another. It's very unlikely that they've built something so strong that it won't be flattened. No, unless they've reinforced it with Five Seal Barriers, Force Walls, or something to that effect, the fortress will come down. Hopefully killing anyone inside and leaving nothing for the assault group to do, but the world is never that kind."

Tsunade snorted in agreement.

"The larger issue is what defenses Sasori may have set up," Orochimaru said. "The world has had two years to learn about and prepare defenses against the so-called Zoo Rush that we used to acquire the Arachnid Scroll from Rock. Were I in Sasori's puppet-worn shoes, I should have produced seal arrays that would pop chakra constructs in the vicinity, as protection against shadow clones and summons. Since such things will be the vast majority of the combat power in the assault group, this would be a problem."

"We could send forward a sacrificial vanguard," Hazō suggested diffidently. "Some genin-level summons, maybe one of my shadow clones since they won't have anything to do after the firing. Well, unless you want them to fire multiple times. The runes can fire multiple shots, but there's a short warmup period before each firing."

Tsunade considered it. "No, I think it's better to use the runes to clear the path, then we get in close. The idea of a vanguard isn't bad, though. Sure, we can send one of your clones in the lead. We'll be right behind him; if he pops then we know to watch out."

"Actually," Mari said, "there might be an option to consider there. May I ask, how are you two at singing?"

The Sannin cocked their heads in unison.

"Singing." Orochimaru's voice jammed a lengthy treatise of disdain into a single word.

"I'm assuming you know not to joke around at a meeting like this, so what's your thought?" Tsunade asked, brushing Orochimaru's further words aside.

"Well..." Mari smiled and laid out an utterly ludicrous plan that caused Tsunade to let a sincere laugh escape from her eternally grouchy face, and even caused Orochimaru to snort in amusement.

"I sing fine," Tsunade said. She jerked a thumb at her battle brother. "He can at least croak along on tempo. Sure, let's try it once to see if it works. If it doesn't work in practice, we don't do it on the day. On the day, if we see the ground and decide it's not a good idea, our sacrificial vanguard can pop and carry the message back for us."

"What about the approach?" Mari asked. "Miles through the woods, heavily laden. Easy to get spotted if they have any sentries pushed far out."

"We've done this once or twice," Tsunade said, although there was a hint of a smile in the words. "We've got some stealth jutsu and various stealth-specialized summons that can clear the road for us."

"And I have this," Orochimaru said, pulling a small box off it was fastened to his belt at the small of his back. He placed it on the table and lifted the lid so the others could see in.

"Is that..." Tsunade asked, the sentence trailing off as she studied the box's contents.

"Just so. I put quite a lot of work into it."

"Where'd you get it?"

"It has been on my person since well before you met up with us. The fact that you didn't notice should tell you all that you need to know."

"Huh." She made a complicated face—surprise, pleasure, relief...something? Guilt? Hazō wasn't sure. "You're sure it'll work for a whole group?"

"Yes, it will work," Orochimaru said, closing the box and hanging it back on his belt. "Despite that, we will still take River Run level precautions."

Tsunade groaned. "Oh, man, why did you have to remind me of that mission? I've gotten to the point where I don't think about it for months at a time and you had to go put it back in my head. Asshole."

"I would apologize, but..."

"But you don't do apologies because you're an asshole. Yeah, fine, whatever. Sure, we'll bring out all the fun tricks."

"Multiple of Akatsuki have special senses," Hazō said. "I'll trust you that you can deal with the stealth part of it. What about the rune infusions? Is there any chance that they will be...'loud' to Kisame, or one of the others?"

Tsunade shrugged. "No way to know, but probably not."

Hazō considered asking for more detail on that, as it seemed like a pretty darn important point to be so casually brushed away.

Tsunade clearly saw his thoughts because she sighed and leaned back, crossing her arms. "Look, runic infusions are like seal infusions, right? You're manifesting the chakra inside the rune, tracing it through some kind of pattern, and then tying it off?"

"Yes, basically. But it's a lot slower and there's a lot more chakra involved."

"Okay, well, if the entire process is contained inside a substrate then it probably won't show up in any degree greater than the amount of chakra present. Can't know for sure but it's what I would bet."

"I concur. And, since I know the workings of your brain, nephew: yes. We have experience that supports our opinions and therefore our concurrence should be acceptable to you."

"Good enough for me," Hazō said, since that was clearly the only acceptable answer. "One last subject: escapees. I had some thoughts on how we can prevent runners..."

---

Author's Note: Hazō talked to people about what was going on back in Leaf. We have been focused on prepping for the Battle of the Rift and have not talked about Leaf or any of that. We'll get you the answers later, possibly including them into a later update or simply posting them as OOC.

Also, the other elements of the plan were discussed and answers agreed to but I intentionally left them off the page so that future readers won't have every detail of the plan spoiled in advance. (For those who want spoilers, click the title to be taken to the plan.) No, Mari's carefully-elided suggestion was not a player plan element. Even the planmakers deserve to have a little bit of surprise ahead. :>

On that subject...it's funny, if this were a novel then this chapter would be a giant neon sign saying "This plan will fail!" (Or, if it was going to succeed then the chapter would never be shown.) As is...we shall see! May Jashin favor your dice.

XP AWARD: 8 This update covered two days spent making preparations. The next chapter will be the actual assault on the rift.

Brevity XP: 0 331 words

"GM had fun" XP: 1

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