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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Before being told about the rift, Oro thought that Hazo was merely expressing PTSD trauma by refusing to pursue Runesmithing. He believed that researching within the Basement would be enough to keep Akatsuki from surveilling Hazo during research or coercing him into revealing his current research projects.

Naruto and Hazopilot seem to believe that the risk of Akatsuki treating Hazo like a Loot-Pinata is high enough to justify some kind of scheme or deception. Now that Oro knows about the rift, I wonder if he would still consider the Basement a satisfactory Runesmithing research site for Hazo.

Benefits:
  • Access to Leaf for Chakra, TH training, sanity checkers, dates with Ino etc.
  • Collaboration with Oro - possibly doubling the researched Runes per week for Hazo & Oro
  • A True Cover Story - Hazo is helping Oro research the Great Seal, and is not permitted to discuss the Sanin's research agenda
    • Dropping one research block per week onto studying the Great Seal might let that plot develop alongside the WMD training montage
    • More screentime with Oro!
  • Probably more
Costs:
  • Oro gains information about Hazo's research
    • This reduces Hazo's comparative advantage in the event we discover something truly broken like Sage Stone
    • Hazo will be focusing on weapons, which Oro could use on the margin to defend his practice of vivisection / atrocities
    • More screentime with Oro!
  • Akatsuki will have Hazo's location, and may send someone to do an Intimidate/Deception roll on him just as a matter of SOP.
  • Having both Runesmiths in the same place increases the existential risk posed by the Great Seal in the event that a Runefailure kills both Hazo + Oro

I recognize that collaboration with Oro is a controversial topic. But something's gotta give, and going missing with all of Uplift seems to be off the table because Cannai's support might not survive a Treason.
 
So Naruto is intentionally fucking our FOOM and even possible rune research in the field, cause I'm 100% sure that he is going to use Noburi to empower Leaf ninja's FOOM. Basically, he expects to hijack Goketsu's FOOM, expect us to come up with some superweapon with PAPER SEALS, and making us difficult to even infuse runes. Great Hokage.

I am tempted to just go along just to turn said superweapon on Leaf.
 
MMKII said:
Like, if we're being hamstrung on the "You are the nukes guy, go make nukes, highest priority" stuff because there's a lot of hidden caveats... okay, this railroad sucks, lets go off the rails lol.
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Yeah. Pardon my language. But what the fuck? Naruto is flip flopping like a mother fucker. Is he trying to make us lose?

Naruto was so worried about the Akatsuki threat, and having us operate freely that he was willing to have us go missing-nin and commit treason.

Then he changes his mind on waiting, tells us it's so important, that we need to leave right fucking now, like right this instant.

And then he hamstrings us to f*ck, tells us we can only bring two people (and Yuno?) and no support.

Like, he does realize we're his ace in the hole to kill mother-fucking Akatsuki?

Without us he has nothing. Nothing. Nothing to stop Akatsuki. Might as well roll over and ship them the white flag.

And this bullshit about us not being able to bring our family because it would be to suspicious. We've gone on long missions like this before with way more support (recent cave diving) and Hazo still got destroyed (got a severe).

The reason why you need to bring enough firepower to level a minor village is so you can protect Hazo, a researcher that can't protect himself!!

The guy who single handedly changed the face of warfare!
Built weapons so powerful he inadvertently caused a genocide to stop the proliferation!
Killed countless Dragons so horrifying that Summon Bosses cowered in fear!


It's a stupid idea for him to walk off to do research and then get promptly taken out by a minor chakra beast, (more likely) a flying chakra beast or a random Jounin team that stumbles across him.

It should be seen as his royal guard entourage. Frankly he should be asking for more firepower than just his family! Wherever he travels! The fact that he doesn't have bodyguards follow him daily is a Leaf policy failure! He's too important to trip over a butter knife, get jumped by a chakra cat in the middle of the night, or have an opportunistic ninja put a knife in his ribs.

Hazo is literally the biggest easiest loot pinata the world's ever seen! He can't do any combat, but is full of goodies for the taking!

Also questioning him about Kagome and research is so silly. It would be like asking John Von Neuman if he really needs all these other researchers to build a Nuke. (Richard Feynman, Einstein, Fermi, Teller, Oppenheimer, etc) He doesn't know! It's research!

And on such a short timeline as well? Even the Manhattan project didn't require new pie-in-the-sky research so quickly and they already solved the hard part of knowing it was theoretically possible. (And they were given the budget the size of a small country, hired literally all the smartest people in the world, didn't need to worry about being killed in the jungle, and were working on just applying the theory, and it still took them years) Research is research. It takes as long as it takes. Naruto expecting such short timelines and for Hazo to pull rabbits out of a hat all by himself and then questioning him about his needs (do you really need Kagome?), is pretty unsimulationist IMO. It feels as if Naruto's looked at the rule set, and is acting out of character. In the real world, world class researchers only make one or two real fundamental unique discoveries before they no longer contribute to the canon. And expecting someone to come up with world shattering ideas in a few months is extremely silly even if they've done amazing work in the past. (Especially, expecting him to do it completely alone with literally no support. Most research is done collaboratively!) Naruto should be deferring to Hazo on what he needs. If Hazo says he needs a literal secret city with 100k people and a near infinite budget, Naruto should reply, "Would you like it in space or underground?." If Hazo says jump, Naruto should say how high.



Hazo should say nah. He's gonna sit in Leaf, train TH for a bit, level his combat, etc.... Maybe eat some cookies. Kick back and take a nice holiday. Chat with Akatsuki on how the world's gonna look like in a year. As with this plan we're gonna lose. Might as well enjoy our last year in luxury and not in some god forsaken hostile country or village, a second away from death, a mile up, or more likely in the torture dungeon of some village, about to spill our guts out.


*No disrespect to the QM's or anyone involved. You guys write a great quest, and it's been a lot of fun.
 
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Honestly, I think you're all being too hard on Naruto here.

He is trying to do this without Leaf getting nuked. Other than that, he is taking a pretty big risk to kill Akatsuki and open the rift. We don't want Leaf nuked here, either.

He's not sending everyone, because we're trying to do this without Akatsuki immediately sending a squad after us and/or nuking Leaf. We know the Tower has a leak, and we want to push things that much?
He's not sending Noburi, because that clues in Akatsuki, and also he doesn't really need to. He agreed outright to send us chakra via the 7th path, though, which is good enough.
He's okay with sending Mari, Kei, or Kagome in some combination that isn't too suspicious. Again, the objection here is we are trying to stealth it.
And finally we can bring Yuno, which is nice I guess.

So we could get Kagome and Mari/Kei. Our sealmaster sensei and a sanity checker/guard. And Yuno. And we get chakra via the 7th path.

Seriously what is the issue here. It's not like we'll never see them again. We are coming back. We are not going missing. This is a long mission. It's not even the first long mission we've done. If Mari and Yuno and us/Kagome's traps are not enough to be secure, then Akatsuki sent a two-essie squad after us and we're fucked anyway.
 
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Buggy said:
Honestly, I think you're all being too hard on Naruto here.

He is trying to do this without Leaf getting nuked. Other than that, he is taking a pretty big risk to kill Akatsuki and open the rift. We don't want Leaf nuked here, either.

He's not sending everyone, because we're trying to do this without Akatsuki immediately sending a squad after us and/or nuking Leaf. We know the Tower has a leak, and we want to push things that much?
He's not sending Noburi, because that clues in Akatsuki, and also he doesn't really need to. He agreed outright to send us chakra via the 7th path, though, which is good enough.
He's okay with sending Mari, Kei, or Kagome in some combination that isn't too suspicious. Again, the objection here is we are trying to stealth it.
And finally we can bring Yuno, which is nice I guess.

So we could get Kagome and Mari/Kei. Our sealmaster sensei and a sanity checker/guard. And Yuno. And we get chakra via the 7th path.

Seriously what is the issue here. It's not like we'll never see them again. We are coming back. We are not going missing. This is a long mission. It's not even the first long mission we've done. If Mari and Yuno and us/Kagome's traps are not enough to be secure, then Akatsuki sent a two-essie squad after us and we're fucked anyway.
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Except you missed the part where we can't do research and shadow clones effectively. That what the "what is the issue here" and is the core issue, me and others have felt. It's not good enough as far as chakra concern goes.


MMKII said:
There is no "full speed" with Shadow Clones for Hazou in this scenario.

We can't effectively use Shadow Clones for research unless Noburi is physically present.

Part of the argument intended in the previous plan (or at least what I pitched at some point in the cycle) was having Hazou underline this point to Naruto: If we go missing without Noburi, we can either spend a day doing one rune, or use Shadow Clones to do paper sealing. Hazou can't work on runes with shadow clones (goes for other combinations of multithreading) if Noburi isn't present: its too much chakra and clones pop when you reverse summon (so you would have to recast the SC technique with all the chakra you just got, making it pointless).


Also you need to keep in mind that it applies to this as well: FOOM doesn't work with 7th Path chakra transfers unless you already have enough chakra to do it without. You can only carry one person's worth of chakra over, and you need a lot of extra chakra to give to the Shadow Clones after creating them to train.
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Also, unrelated but getting Yuno without Noburi is a bad idea regardless of Naruto "She's a leaf ninja" BS. We know her better as her clan head and shouldn't do such mistake that would only cause us issues down the line.
 
Korporati said:
getting Yuno without Noburi is a bad idea [...] shouldn't do such mistake that would only cause us issues down the line.
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I dunno, having a long period of time where she's away from leaf and all the various pressures might be good for her. More specifically, using that time to better connect with her and possibly help shape certain unwise religious beliefs...

She's always been, more of less, Noburi's yandere wife. Even back when she was just Noburi's yandere crush. Might be worth taking the time to really internalize her as family.

As for the current limitations Naruto is imposing... meh. I'm willing to try it out for a bit, see what we can make work before we give it up as a lost cause and complain. Since we're not going missing, we could feasibly swap out members of our team occasionally. Or, you know, have the people left behind sneak out, meet up with us and actually go missing. Point is its not worth getting pissed off just yet, lets get some evidence about how it works first, then adjust our plans as necessary.

I want to bring Kei and Kagome. But I also feel the need to point out that they are both summoners, and Naruto was kinda unhappy about bringing a bunch of summoners. Without Noburi to zoo rush he might not care as much about 3 summoners going out together but it still feels like a risk.

Bringing Mari and Kagome leaves behind Snowflake and my not-so-secret plans to have her and Hazo spend plenty of time together out in the wilderness, bonding, getting some more of that genuine Goketsu wilderness experience. And all of Kei's drama, but where's the fun in that?

Bringing Mari and Kei, both our sanity checkers, honestly feels like a pretty decent team composition but poor Kagome already feels like we're abandoning him :( :( :( SENSEI NO ITS NOT LIKE THAT WE LOVE YOU

If we bring Mari we can afford to leave Yuno behind, if we don't then we need Yuno to be the squad's Jonin combatant. Bringing both, however, would be good for my 'get Yuno's head on straight' plan.
 
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Korporati said:
Except you missed the part where we can't do research and shadow clones effectively. That what the "what is the issue here" and is the core issue, me and others have felt. It's not good enough as far as chakra concern goes.
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Alright, that's not ideal, but that's hardly unsolvable. We can try for sage stones, or a chakra battery rune. And regardless, it's a hinderance, not a dealbreaker. This mission still gets us the ability to do runes at all, which is something we do not have in Leaf unless we buddy up with Oro, and the majority opinion seems opposed to that.

And is Naruto wrong? Between the two of us, he is absolutely better placed to see the geopolitical ramifications and whatnot. Unless he's just lying to our face, i'm inclined to believe him when he says "that plan would get Akatsuki on your heels faster than you can say "cloud"". Given we're not going missing, and we're trying to avoid Leaf getting nuked or us killed, i'm not to fussed at a sanity checker telling us we're in a awkward spot.
 
Cariyaga said:
I realize you didn't intend it that way but that comes across as an insult to Velorien.
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Delve is a fun meme that's been going around on Twitter, with the word being more statistically common in works written by LLMs due to the fine-tunning being done by Nigerians in Africa, where the word Delve is more common. No insult intended.
 
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Velorien said:
Naruto was delighted to receive such valuable intel, but the building mood of camaraderie died an icy death when he realised that you'd failed to do the thing that should be obvious to any loyal Leaf ninja and pass it on to the Tower the instant you got it.
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Since when is giving information purchased at great expense away for free the "obvious" thing to do. Also, it's been like 2 weeks? And we've been preoccupied. What a little bitch.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Since when is giving information purchased at great expense away for free the "obvious" thing to do. Also, it's been like 2 weeks? And we've been preoccupied. What a little bitch.
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The knowledge came directly from "LoYaL lEaF nInJa" Orochimaru. Naruto can afford to buy his secrets himself from now on, if this is the kind of reception that we get when we hand over S-tier intel unprompted.
 
Velorien said:
"Fair," Naruto said. "But I don't hear anything that Noburi can't do from here in the village, via the Seventh Path. In fact, he has to be here because he needs to drain his chakra from somewhere before he can give it to you. If he goes, either he drains your team, and then there's no point taking combatants along because they'll be dry when trouble hits, or he scavenges from chakra beasts and risks getting caught.
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Would it not be extremely obvious to Hazou that Noburi could drain the team members about 25% and easily have them combat ready, also Hazou could be drained to refill Noburi on days where he's prepping?

The team went years refilling Noburi without getting caught. WTF
 
Velorien said:
  • Naruto is fine with endorsing your Toad Sage training application, but only if you can explain to him what good it would do right now, considering that combat training wouldn't give results fast enough to affect the rift race and the sages can't teach you anything about sealing.
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Cariyaga said:
You're asking us to explain the mechanics of the system to him, you know. :p
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Well, since he asked so nicely...

[X] Action Plan: Hazo the Monkey Paw
Word Count: <100
  • Spent the night writing down the entirety of the Rules Document and send it to Naruto.
    • Highlight the chapter on EXP mechanics.
    • Provide examples of when Hazo has hit stagnancy barriers as evidence for its correctness.
    • Point out that Hazo is a superb teacher who knows what he is talking about, as evidenced by Kei, Noburi, etc.
  • Recommend Hazo's favorite type of Willowbark Tea to soothe Naruto's newly-acquired headache.
  • Also tell him to eat our ███, it'll be funny.
 
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Buggy said:
Well, since he asked so nicely...

[X] Action Plan: Hazo the Monkey Paw
Word Count: <100
  • Spent the night writing down the entirety of the Rules Document and send it to Naruto.
    • Highlight the chapter on EXP mechanics.
    • Provide examples of when Hazo has hit stagnancy barriers as evidence for its correctness.
    • Point out that Hazo is a superb teacher who knows what he is talking about, as evidenced by Kei, Noburi, etc.
  • Recommend Hazo's favorite type of Willowbark Tea to soothe Naruto's newly-acquired headache.
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Add a line where we tell him to eat our entire ass and I'll fucking vote for it.
 
NARUTO: ... what do you mean you've had this for two weeks?

HAZOU: Yeah yeah yeah, I've been a bit fucking busy if you couldn't tell. Speaking of shit that's taking literally forever, do you have that shit you said you'd help me out with or what?

NARUTO: What are you talking about?

HAZOU: You said you were going to spot me on some cool sealing notes after we got you the Hat?

NARUTO: ... Nah I don't remember that.

HAZOU: Right.

NARUTO: Do pushups until I get tired, that's an order.

HAZOU: ... yes sir.


While comedic, this is about how helpful I am finding Naruto on the issues we need some leeway or assistance with :confused:
 
redzonejoe said:
I dunno, having a long period of time where she's away from leaf and all the various pressures might be good for her. More specifically, using that time to better connect with her and possibly help shape certain unwise religious beliefs...

She's always been, more of less, Noburi's yandere wife. Even back when she was just Noburi's yandere crush. Might be worth taking the time to really internalize her as family.
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I suppose I could see the benefit of such a prolonged disconection could be useful, I just dont think NOW in a mission without any clear return time is the correct time to do so, while we are on a desperate bid to find a superweapon to defeat Akatsuki.
Buggy said:
Alright, that's not ideal, but that's hardly unsolvable. We can try for sage stones, or a chakra battery rune. And regardless, it's a hinderance, not a dealbreaker. This mission still gets us the ability to do runes at all, which is something we do not have in Leaf unless we buddy up with Oro, and the majority opinion seems opposed to that.
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Suggesting we come up with a Noburi replacement (Damn that sounds horrible) is fair. However, I'm less keen on a plan that hitches on us developing means for which there is no indication we'll be able to develop. It's different if we already know the viability and timeline for it, for example.

If you ask me, I don't think this project is viable; While I agree that getting chakra from the environment into a rune is viable, I'm iffy about the rune's ability to transfer it to humans directly. That screams bio seals to me, since it interacted with the human chakra coils and chakra bs biology.
Sir Stompy said:
Since when is giving information purchased at great expense away for free the "obvious" thing to do. Also, it's been like 2 weeks? And we've been preoccupied. What a little bitch.
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Saving the world and the 7th path from an extinction level threat no less, omegalul Hokage.
 
MMKII said:
NARUTO: ... what do you mean you've had this for two weeks?

HAZOU: Yeah yeah yeah, I've been a bit fucking busy if you couldn't tell. Speaking of shit that's taking literally forever, do you have that shit you said you'd help me out with or what?

NARUTO: What are you talking about?

HAZOU: You said you were going to spot me on some cool sealing notes after we got you the Hat?

NARUTO: ... Nah I don't remember that.

HAZOU: Right.

NARUTO: Do pushups until I get tired, that's an order.

HAZOU: ... yes sir.


While comedic, this is about how helpful I am finding Naruto on the issues we need some leeway or assistance with :confused:
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How do I like, insightful, and funny a post
 
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