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
My point was that while you can argue that Nara or the Hokage might immediately try to reign Hazo in, etc. they wouldn't actually know what the effects of Hazo are on the economy and would be unable to discover the effects after the fact. So Hazo has more leeway then you'd natively expect.
Simplified:
Player base: Hazo can't do X because Naruto would know X causes Y, hence he would stop Hazo. Or if he didn't already know, Naruto would find out after the fact that X causes Y and therefore stop X.
Me: Naruto can't and is functionally incapable of finding out that X causes Y. This means we can do X without considering the effects of Y. As Y will never be part of Naruto's decision making process.
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
She's maybe-ace/aro, given that Orochimaru once said that Jiraiya and Tsunade broke up due to Tsunade not fucking Jiraiya.
I feel like this fundamentally misunderstands ninja culture in a way that is pervasive among the playerbase.
The EN is a foreign culture, they do things differently there. Ninja are not modern post-Elightenment post-WWII people.
For example, do you think killing foreign ninja is regrettable and to be avoided if possible? They don't. They think it builds character. Do you think civilians are human beings? They don't. Civvies are livestock to most ninja.
They view a life doing the sort of bean-counting you described as literally worse than death, and ninja who choose to partake in such a life as "skinwastes" literal human refuse.
So no, I doubt the Nara would do that, even if they understood the theory behind it.
True and reasonable. I speculate about her having a very private relationship with Shizune, but if she does it's probably best not to pry.
I appreciate you rephrasing it- put like that I agree. Could be worth a try if we have spare spoons/WC.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hm. Shizune's closer to Hazou's age than Tsunade's... I would put money on Kon Ai, if anyone. They're her first apprentice and trusted/skilled enough to run the hospital while Tsunade is gone, and they're the ones who originally complied Tsunade's instruction into Leaf's medical textbooks... that Hiruzen then neutered before they got spread around the continent, but the point remains.
We should use gold to buy back the gemstones we traded for votes. Unless we want to screw over Hinata.
Suffering from success. Apprenticing with both would consume all aspects of Noburi's life outside training. But asking what no sleep juice Tsunade could cook up for a not-apprentice is seductive.
Tsunade does scary things with a touch. Good second choice for clearing spies out the Tower if Yamanaka mind scans cannot?
Neuron activation!
Nononononoono. Never discuss sensitive information in a room with a gift from another country! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Mmmm. Our negotiating position is the bottom line. Taking the clear communication for what it is instead of hostility.
Tbf, we went to Asuma after breaking the code, before researching any seals. If he said no, we could have worked on independent projects guaranteed to be classified as clan secrets instead.
Feisty.
Hee.
One more thing to lose sleep over.
Feels very important to understanding Orochimaru's behavior and outward lack of curiosity. He adjusts his baseline odds too slowly.
Wow.
Resting sour-when-impressed face. Witness the power of Kagome approved seal load outs.
Pinch me. Unbelievable to casually be having this conversation with Orochimaru. Sad he did not take the bait to info dump about multiversal immortals. One universe's immortals are another universe's existential crisis.
Sad the kid does not have the chops to defend his views when they are poked.
Immortal? Maybe not, but afterlife rift? With resurrection in play + many years of rune research who knows.
Spoken like someone who raised Anko. /j
Caring about your immediate circle scales up. Teach people to care about bigger circles and make circles overlap as much as they can. A world that spits out rare good people by accident can be bent to spit out good people consistently. A world that spits out societies that spit out societies that spit out good people. Helps build trust if the temperature is turned down, the damage any defecting Hidan could do sharply limited.
He knows the deep Nara theory! It is enough if every arrangement except collaboration is negative-sum.
The Seventh path has species barriers and religious dogma to overcome. Somehow Orochimaru is both more egalitarian and more cynical than expected.
True. He do have mountains of direct experience. But all of his evidence comes from inside the rat trap.
Consider our trajectory. Invented flight. Adopted into Leaf. Rediscovered Primordial Sealing and united strident enemies against the Dragons. Tbd what happens with necromancy. Is it wrong to expect the tend to continue? Orochimaru thinks every unexpected success is the last before regression to patterns he has seen before. Probably better that way.
Good note to close our conversations with Orochimaru on. Please keep underestimating us. We are harmless.
No motivation for him to lie but doubt there is a paper trail to prove this claim.
What next? Hidan is growing penicillin in his disturbing body?
Honestly, I would like to screw over the Hyuga. We've been focusing way too much on the Hagoromo and not nearly enough on the Hyuga.
His entire thing is being a fallen idealist, we got a pretty good look at his younger self from poking at his old notes where he had back-and-forths with Sunny and Jiraiya about his research and his belief in the Will of Fire wavering.
Well, yes. Social progress drives technological progress, not the other way around. Without social progress, when Orochimaru or Hazo invents something new like better rice or skywalkers, it proliferates outside their control and gets abused. Even if we achieve necromancy we have a fairly short window where we can leverage it to change society with maximum effect. Orochimaru is mainly only wrong because we're the protagonist and thus doomed to exist during the parts of the narrative where the world can change. Without that sort of meta awareness he's just correct.
I suspect that he did invent such a thing and that his name was stricken from it for the impersonal reason of nobody wanting to have the terrifying (former) archtraitor's name on it.
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This is not really true. (Unless you count property rights and such things in that category as "social progress") Technological progress in driven by having the resources to invest in better tech, which leads to more money/resources, which allows larger investments in developing better tech/businesses/capital, etc, in a positive flywheel effect. Just look at China's, South Korea's, or Singapore's industrialization. They were pretty much all ruled by a dictator with very little "social progress" but all had massive technological progress. Hazo developing tech for increasing farmer crop yields is just a million times more important than most developments. You can't eat social progress!
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- Location
- United States
That actually would be a step forward under the current system where Asuma technically owns everything and the tragedy of the commons abounds.
As Bomb mentioned, yes I do.
None of them existed in a vacuum. Their industrialization was only possible because a richer and more developed nation paid them to exploit their population.
EDIT: Also, I think there was a miscommunication so to clarify- I mean the entirety of a closed system, such as Earth or the Elemental Nations as a whole. China or etc got to play catchup because they sold cheap labor to richer nations, they weren't making significant innovations ahead of the global forefront while they were mid-industrialization. The MFD setting as a whole is going to have difficulty making significant technological advances unless ninja chill out, and I want to note that the village system allowed people like Orochimaru or Hazo to discover significant breakthroughs specifically because ninja did chill out a bit. Not as much difficulty as real life, because chakra makes the Great Man theory of history somewhat more plausible, because some demigod juiced to the gills with 90s and 80s in research skills can in fact alter the course of history by themselves. But barring magic bending the usual rules of reality to let someone like the Sage become a demigod, what I said holds.
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- Location
- United States
Konoha isn't an autarky, but the Elemental Nations (probably?) is!
I learned that word earlier today and wanted to share it. Never expected it to be relevant so soon!
"Soon We'll Go Missing Again" - a Marked for Death sea shanty
"Soon We'll Go Missing Again" - a Marked for Death sea shanty
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lyZsTESyHXdDIHYObEnr8IpuRp52fS-C/view?usp=drivesdk
My friend started writing this ~2 weeks back when it looked like we were about to go missing from Leaf.
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lyZsTESyHXdDIHYObEnr8IpuRp52fS-C/view?usp=drivesdk
There once was a kid who lived in Mist,
his teachers found him quite a pest.
Inoue chose him with the rest -
to Noodle they would go
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
Denouncements flew and blood was shed.
The jounin fought; commander's dead.
Marked for death, survivors fled
to Hidden Swamp they'd go
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
Away from Swamp, the world was bleak—
the mighty prey upon the weak.
The ninja only war do seek:
this Uplift swore they'd change.
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
They turned their eyes up to the sky,
to walk on clouds, to try to fly.
And soon—success!—they did belie
the ground far down below
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
Established clan, they can proceed
in teaching all the Uplift creed.
In ninja they'd instill a need
to help civilians grow.
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
If we could open up the rift,
the paradigm would quickly shift.
But Akatsuki's moving swift -
we must not be too slow.
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
his teachers found him quite a pest.
Inoue chose him with the rest -
to Noodle they would go
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
Denouncements flew and blood was shed.
The jounin fought; commander's dead.
Marked for death, survivors fled
to Hidden Swamp they'd go
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
Away from Swamp, the world was bleak—
the mighty prey upon the weak.
The ninja only war do seek:
this Uplift swore they'd change.
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
They turned their eyes up to the sky,
to walk on clouds, to try to fly.
And soon—success!—they did belie
the ground far down below
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
Established clan, they can proceed
in teaching all the Uplift creed.
In ninja they'd instill a need
to help civilians grow.
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
If we could open up the rift,
the paradigm would quickly shift.
But Akatsuki's moving swift -
we must not be too slow.
Soon we'll go missing again
and research things beyond our ken.
Leave everything else behind,
just take the fam and go.
My friend started writing this ~2 weeks back when it looked like we were about to go missing from Leaf.
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Right!? I was looking forward to being the world's most prolific missing-nin.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The night is young, my friend. I'm certain one of Naruto's coded orders to us (the ones that activate if he includes certain phrases in his message) is "I can delay them no longer, you must go missing for real".
One truth about this situation remains: we do not know if we have enough time. We could have months of wiggle room or find ourselves months slower than the Akatsuki. Everything will come to a head someday, and we simply do not know where we will be when that happens. The futures ahead of us spiral out in many very different directions, well more than just victory and defeat. There's Hazou the Akatsuki-slayer, who in one decisive strike toppled the strongest ninja in the world. There's Hazou the disgraced, who one day vanished into the night and cannot be found no matter how hard everyone searches. There's Hazou the defeated, either utterly destroyed by Akatsuki or brought under their thumb with a grand finality, no room left to defy their order. There's Hazou the destroyer, who invented a weapon powerful enough to wipe hidden villages off the map and holds the world hostage with his demands. Hazou the explorer, who went to the far ends of the world to seek the secret truths he needs. Hazou the traitor, approached by strange ninja wearing coloured masks and given an offer to help usher in a new age. And, if we do everything right, the light at the end of the tunnel, Hazou the son of Jiraiya, lover of Akane and Ino, in a world where Leaf can keep him and his loved ones safe and where the world might just come to know some semblance of peace.
We can get there from many directions, I feel, the story and outcome different in colour but not in character, but we mustn't think that there is only one path ahead of us. This is, rather than a closing off of opportunities, one of the moments with the most potential we've ever seen. Over the course of this one mission the shape and nature of Marked for Death can change in so many different ways and by the end we could be in any number of different futures. We just have to set our sights on the routes with the best chances of success, and remain flexible to the changes of the world around us, as some of these possibilities settle themselves in as fact.
Chapter 657: Torn Between Titans
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The murmur of Hazō and Mari's conversation–she attempting to offer unsolicited bedroom advice as a way of relieving her stress, he utilising every conversational stratagem in his arsenal in order to forestall her–made for pleasant background noise as the Gōketsu waited in Cleaning Supplies Overflow for the unfortunate man of the hour. Alas, Kei was neither in the mood nor in a position to join in the traditional family hobby of Hazō-teasing, nor to benefit from the educational value should Mari emerge triumphant (not that she was remotely curious, of course, but the way of the Nara demanded that she assess the information before rejecting it). There was simply too much to contemplate, and no oversight could be tolerated.
Kei was seeing to the handovers and contingencies for the Nara projects within her sphere of responsibility, especially the NFF and Project Synergy (in the unlikely event of her survival, it should be prepared for her journey to Mist by the time she returned), the usual mountains of KEI work, those elements of the Gōketsu finances that could not be entrusted to Gaku, and the regular check-in on Murai (monitoring whom was usually an ACC activity, but as the architect of Murai's warped lifestyle, Kei felt responsible for liaising with her personally). A hundred different tasks. Would the Nara stewards heed her injunctions with regard to Shikamaru's proper nutrition and sleeping hours, both of which invariably slipped as clan head duties accumulated, or should she put the fear of herself in them again? Perhaps she should prevail on Tenten to monitor their efforts on a periodic basis.
Meanwhile, Snowflake was in charge of liaising with Jin with regard to the ex-KEI adoptees, arranging protection and contingency plans for the Rainbow Fire (she pitied anyone who made a hostile move at a time when retribution would come not from herself but from Mari and Anko), internal polycule matters, a final safety check on Ami's leftover contingencies, and other miscellanea that did not require Kei's clearance or authority.
Nothing could be neglected. Hazō had not shared the details of the upcoming mission with the team, but the timing, and in fact the lack of detail, spoke for itself. This was an expedition beyond Akatsuki's reach, timed to maximise the interval until their next visit to Leaf (Kei having followed the last, an initial investigation into the village whose destruction she had permitted, as closely as she dared). Initially Kei had assumed that rift research would be the goal, since she did not truly believe Hazō would ever abandon his efforts. However, Hazō's nomination of Hyūga weighed the balance of probability towards weapons research in truth, in which case the special need to evade Akatsuki's notice made its intended target obvious.
In other words, Hazō and his chosen team were setting themselves directly against Akatsuki, on nothing more than the hope that countermeasures effective against a squad of demigods could be discovered before Akatsuki grew wise to their plans and found a means to compel their return for execution.
Kei should not have agreed. Kei had been suicidal to agree. So much rested on her shoulders that would be lost when she was murdered, to say nothing of the likelihood that her loved ones would be taken hostage to be used against her. She knew how competent Akatsuki were at torture from the darkness that sometimes surfaced behind Naruto's eyes, even at home, even among friends.
Kei should have sent her mother and her brother to their deaths as she and Snowflake sat at home in relative safety. It would have been the rational, responsible decision. She should have abandoned them as she had abandoned Ami. As her parents had abandoned her.
Motion triggered her paranoid missing-nin alertness as Noburi swung open the door with a performative abundance of energy.
"What's up, ladies and gentle–well, Hazō, anyway. Sorry to keep you waiting. Good news, my Tsunade-dodging game is at another level now. Bad news, she's Tsunade. I'll be counting on you guys to help me get out of this one."
Tractable problems.
"By all means, elaborate," Kei invited as Snowflake, sensitive to her mood as she could never be to anyone else's, subtly squeezed her hand. "I need not be convinced of the danger that exalted luminary poses to life and limb."
"Right," Noburi said, casting off his pack onto the floor with the sacrilegious thud of a grimoire carelessly treated. "Long story short, I'm in a bit of a pinch, courtesy of being just too talented for my own good. A couple of days ago, me and Hazō negotiated with Ma and Pa. Side note, it's weirdly relaxing being the one doing the optimising while Hazō's the one putting himself in the line of fire. I can see why you girls are so into it. Obviously, that made it a roaring success, which is to say Ma and Pa very reluctantly agreed to give Hazō some ninjutsu crafting lessons while we're away on the mission, and more importantly, I'm getting a trial run for hardcore Toad Sage training of the kind that turned Jiraiya into a legendary badass."
Classic Hazō. When the opportunity finally arose to dedicate himself to sealing research with only limited interruption (neither Kei nor Snowflake doubted that Noburi would soon bring word of a new crisis that their presence might have mitigated), he promptly deviated from the original plan to pursue a new and different ambition with wild abandon.
"From the fact that you mentioned Tsunade," Snowflake said, "I infer that she has a separate claim on your time which she naturally considers superior."
"Got it in one. Apparently, people have been pushing for her to take me on as an apprentice, and while she's not up for that, she's interested in doing research on my Bloodline Limit, which would still teach me a lot and would probably leave me with some amazing medical ninjutsu."
"And there's only one person who can push Tsunade in a way she'd even notice and who has a vested interest in Noburi being reliably on hand in the near future," Mari added.
Noburi looked at her silently. His expression fell.
"...yeah, OK. No point in pretending. It's a Barrel Boy thing, not an 'I want to work with Noburi' thing. Thanks for the reminder."
Kei and Snowflake gave Mari synchronised cold looks.
She shrugged. "You have to be clear on people's motivations before you can shape them the way you want."
"Either way," Hazō said quickly, "we're in a difficult situation where Noburi has to pick between two, well, three people who will all be seriously offended by a refusal and might refuse to deal with him again. We need solutions.
"My first thought is a Noburi timeshare. Maybe they could trade off days, or take half a day each? That would get us the best of both worlds."
Mari shook her head. "I don't see it. The Toad Sages taught Jiraiya. They'll be expecting total dedication, and frankly, the kind of training regime we're talking about needs to demand total dedication, or it's not worth your time. Trust an elite jōnin. If they came to you with a timeshare proposal, I'd assume they were fobbing you off."
"I would expect the training styles of ancient masters to be more optimised than those of contemporary jōnin," Kei objected, "especially contemporary jōnin who achieved that rank at a young age through prodigious talent and thus relied less on a well-developed training style than most of their fellows.
"On the other hand, I find it difficult, nay, impossible to imagine Tsunade accepting anything but absolute cooperation from any lowly mortal on whom she has deigned to bestow her time. She is not a woman of compromise."
"She must have patients she could look after in the downtime," Hazō said.
"Now that we have received unequivocal confirmation that Tsunade both possesses and has no philosophical compunctions over using the Shadow Clone Technique," Kei said, "it seems reasonable to assume that she could simply assign one or more shadow clones to ensuring that her hospital duties are uninterrupted, or vice versa."
"Actually," Noburi said, "that's one of the great unsolved mysteries of Senju Tsunade. You'd think they'd be massive for multiplying her medical skills, but until the battle, nobody knew for sure whether she used them at all–or at least nobody ever caught her in two places at the same time, or two of her in one place at the same time."
"Research, perhaps?" Snowflake speculated. "It would be a criminal waste of her abilities to spend all her time on individual patients at the hospital"–Noburi frowned, but didn't say anything–"and whom better to assign to work with hazardous substances and vicious disease spirits than a shadow clone whose suffering would be nothing to her?"
"Huh," Noburi said. "Now you say it out loud, it's kinda obvious. Also, uh, my condolences."
"It is what it is," Snowflake said. "I claim no right to speak for others of my kind, but I at least choose the suffering of this cruel world over the peace of oblivion every day."
It was one of the many mysteries of Snowflake that on rare occasion, her divergence looped in a perfect circle to being another Kei.
"I don't suppose," Hazō said speculatively, his gaze fixed on some distant plane of possibility, "we could just get them in a room together and have them talk it out like reasonable adults?"
…
"Nice one, Hazō," Mari said once the laughter settled down.
Kei, too, envied the extraordinary smoothness with which Hazō had dispelled the sombre mood created by Snowflake's words, and with deadpan in no way inferior to her own.
"...thanks," Hazō said after a second. "All right, why don't we get Naruto to meditate? If Mari's theory is right, he's willing to exert his authority to make this happen, and the Toad Sages seem to have a soft spot for him in a way they don't for us."
"Sure," Mari said, "but flip that around to what it would mean for us. Naruto must already have exhausted his pull with Tsunade if she didn't go for the apprentice idea, which could have kept Noburi under his thumb for years. The Sages might like him more, but that doesn't mean they want him meddling in business between them and their summoner. In return for nothing more than his personal charisma, we'd be losing face in front of both parties."
"What do you mean?"
"Just like what happens every time I go to negotiate on your behalf," Mari said. "Nobody bats an eye at a clan head sending his trained diplomat to persuade or negotiate in his stead, especially when the stakes are high, because using every resource at your disposal is how the game is played. But at the same time, it's a signal that you don't think you're good enough to get the job done yourself, and those signals accumulate. That's why other clan heads negotiate with you in person on anything big, even if they have social specs who could do a better job, and why I'm not constantly volunteering to handle clan PR."
"And not all because you'd rather laze around the house drinking hot chocolate and reading smut," Noburi clarified.
"Perish the thought," Mari agreed. "You take my point, though. If there's nothing Naruto can say to them that you couldn't say yourself, then you're just making yourself look weak by relying on him, in front of people whose limited respect you can't afford to lose."
"Furthermore," Kei said, "the core concept is critically flawed. Assuming Mari's theory regarding the Hokage's influence is correct, he has a compelling vested interest in Noburi accepting Tsunade's offer while rejecting–or being rejected by–the Toad Sages, at least for the time being."
"For the time being?" Hazō repeated. "Actually, that's a thought. Could we get the Toad Sages to put off the training by a couple of months, until Tsunade's done with her side?"
"Could go either way," Noburi said. "Maybe two months is nothing to them on account of their age, and they'll say whatever. Or maybe they'll be offended that I'm getting the offer of a lifetime and then trying to haggle because some slip of a girl on the Human Path wants to work with me on medical ninjutsu, which, by the way, they think I should drop because it's a dumb choice of discipline for a summoner and is stalling my growth.
"Slip of a girl?" Kei clarified.
"They're like six hundred years old," Noburi said. "To them, the difference between me and Tsunade is that one's an uppity toddler and the other is an uppity toddler who doesn't need to have a grown-up constantly holding her hand."
"Right," Hazō said. "Then I guess it comes down to pros and cons. The Toad Sages have a lot of marks in their favour. They taught Jiraiya, which is a great track record."
"A single data point cannot serve as a track record," Kei objected.
"Even if they spent years doing it?"
"Even then."
"Well, it proves they can be good teachers, anyway," Hazō said.
"It does no such thing," Kei said. "Certainly, the summoner position would have been an element in Jiraiya's rise to power, but it is beyond our means to select any given capability of his and reliably attribute it to the Toad Sages. Even his signature Toad ninjutsu could plausibly have been obtained from other summons; after all, I required no particular contacts to obtain one of the holy grails of shinobi warfare from the Pangolins."
"Fine," Hazō said. "But there are other reasons to be on their good side. They know a lot of eldritch lore they might be persuaded to share, ideally weaponisable eldritch lore. That's part of my goal in learning technique hacking from them, in fact–and that's another benefit which might get lost if we offend them. Noburi also needs to stay on good terms with them to remain the Toad Summoner."
"What? No, I don't."
Noburi gave Hazō a perplexed look. "Gamabunta's the one who decides my summoner status. I mean, if Ma and Pa decided they really hated me, they could tell him to cancel my contract and get a better summoner, but even then, I don't know if he'd go for it. The Toad Sages aren't sitting on his shoulders telling him what to do–they're a pair of powerful hermits living in the woods who we happen to know by sheer chance because of Jiraiya. It would be like Tsunade dictating terms to the Hokage."
"Which I can entirely see her doing," Hazō countered.
"Tsunade is strong enough to challenge the Hokage," Mari said. "She was certainly stronger than Asuma. But what that means politically is that if the Hokage thinks she's overreaching, he has to slap her down decisively or accept the erosion of his power–which is only a threat because she's a threat. We all saw what it was like when Orochimaru could walk all over Asuma. Unless Gamabunta's too dumb to live, he'll recognise what the precedent of letting the Sages pick the clan's summoner would mean for his authority and tell them to go screw themselves."
"Fine," Hazō said. "But still, we're potentially talking years of training here, compared to Tsunade's research, which has a definite end point when she thinks she's learned enough. At the same time, Noburi can't avoid Tsunade forever, and when she finds out he's turned her down, she's going to be furious."
"It occurs to me," Snowflake said, "that we may be dealing with an additional problem aside from Tsunade's fearsome ego. Unlike the Toad Sages, who have no particular stake in training Noburi beyond an abstract preference for a stronger summoner, Tsunade is presumably planning this Bloodline Limit research with the end goal of developing superior medical treatment for those in need. Refusal would then violate not only her sense of entitlement as Tsunade but also her sense of ethics as a doctor, which I imagine to be more powerful by an order of magnitude. If Noburi chooses to pursue training for pure personal power in preference to a project which would surely save many lives in the future…"
Kei nodded. "While the perpetual shortage of competent medic-nin leaves it unlikely that she would blacklist him from the medical profession entirely, the Queen of Doctors could reduce his hopes of professional advancement to ashes with a word."
"Shit," Noburi muttered. "I hadn't even thought of that."
"So that's a thing to put on one side of the scales," Hazō said into the grim silence. "Together with a lot of medical ninjutsu that there's really no way of getting elsewhere, at least if the Orochimaru option's not on the table–"
"It's not."
"–and the general benefits of Tsunade's reputation as a doctor. Noburi, you'd know better than me what those can do for you."
"Also the possibility of new Bloodline Limit applications, potentially eclipsing anything the Wakahisa were able to accomplish without the aid of an S-rank medical specialist," Kei added.
"Hey," Noburi exclaimed, "the Wakahisa have their own share of clan heroes. You realise somebody out there had to have invented the barrel seals, and with them the entire concept of carrying our chakra in a barrel? I dare Tsunade to try inventing practically a new Bloodline Limit."
"She did transplant the Sharingan that one time," Mari said.
"Yeah. One time. Do you have any idea what kind of medical breakthroughs we could've built on that? But no, she says it can't be done again, and she never shared the theory behind it, either. Who knows, maybe another genius medic-nin could've found a way to pull it off if she did. I mean, it's not like Hyūga really needs both eyes as long as he has the Byakugan."
"In fact," Kei opined, "I believe his experience of life would be greatly improved were he divested of all eyeballs in his possession, as well as any other senses you are able to extract. The man is an inexhaustible cornucopia of complaint about all that he surveys."
Hazō raised his eyebrows. "I didn't realise you two hung out together."
"Not by choice, I assure you. However, we are lamentably connected by Tenten in the manner of in-laws and by Hanabi in the manner of a master attempting to instruct her student while a foul, irritating, yet ultimately inconsequential insect bombinates around them."
"Normally," Noburi said, "interrupting a Hyūga-mocking session is the last thing I'd want to do, but this is kinda important, guys."
"Indeed," Kei said, generously refraining from mentioning that Noburi was the one originally responsible for the tangent. "We must also consider the disadvantages of selecting Tsunade, particularly those which are of import to our immediate objectives. Will the Toad Sages refuse to instruct Hazō in technique development if you spurn them, Noburi?"
Noburi thought about it.
"Probably not? They're separate agreements, and besides, I'd be the one taking the blame for picking Tsunade. I've got no reason to drag him down with me."
"On the other hand," Hazō said, "getting lore out of them relies purely on their goodwill, and that's going to dive like a chakra kingfisher spotting a cow if they decide Noburi's offended them by backing out of the side of the deal they actually care about."
"Do we have any reason whatsoever to believe that their lore will be of use for our specific purposes?" Kei asked.
"No, but given how old they are, some of what they know must be relevant, especially with regard to nature chakra. If they decide to withhold it, that could put Project Necromancy in danger."
"Project Necromancy? You mean to confirm that you are proceeding with rift research, in defiance of Akatsuki's restrictions?" Kei asked. "Or are you referring to some alternative contingency, such as–"
"Never mind," Hazō interrupted. "Let's not stray off topic. Noburi, I believe we've covered all the salient points. It's your choice, and you'll have our full support no matter what you decide."
"...my choice, huh?"
Noburi sat in silence, thinking.
Kei pondered choices of her own. It was entirely possible that her personal problems would be made moot by death on the Hyena front lines, her scheduled repayment of the debt incurred by Operation Murdersnout. Her demise would need to be communicated swiftly to Leaf, rendering her loved ones irrelevant as hostages (with the exception of those still being endangered by Hazō, notably Mari, Noburi, Yuno, and Ino), but that was easily accomplished. It would certainly be preferable to the most probable scenario of execution by Akatsuki after whatever means were necessary to compel her team's surrender.
Meanwhile, success was in many ways more frightening than failure, for it would leave the world as it had been once before, with weapons of unspeakable destruction in Hazō's hands, and Hazō in the hands of a Hokage fully cognizant of their power. This time, even assassination would not ensure containment, for Orochimaru also possessed the secrets of runecrafting, and proof of concept would render it even easier for him to replicate those weapons than it had been for Hazō to invent them.
Why had Ami left when she alone, with adroit advocacy and implementation of Operation A-Day, could have prevented this cataclysmic scenario from coming to pass?
Noburi stirred.
"I can do this."
"Do what?" Mari asked.
"I'm not giving up on being the next Tsunade or the next Jiraiya," Noburi said. "I'm going to go to Ma and Pa, and I'm going to wow them with the most masterful display of diplomacy the Toad Clan has ever seen, and I am going to convince them by hook or by crook to delay the start of the training until I've tied up my loose ends and can give them the ultimate fully-focused Noburi. Then I'm going to go to my loose end and work out a professional research schedule with a hard deadline on which I'll be able to kiss Tsunade goodbye and move on to my training come hell or high water."
"Perhaps reverse the order of those two?" Snowflake suggested. "You will be able to impress the Toad Sages more easily if you can make and keep a commitment to a specific date rather than vaguely requesting that they wait until you are available."
"Also," Kei advised, "I would refrain from any valedictory osculations. You will recall that reverse summoning fails if the target does not contain any of the blood used to sign the scroll."
"Good points all," Noburi agreed. "Thanks for your help, people. The countdown has officially begun to the birth of Hidden Leaf's fourth S-ranker."
You have received 1 XP (Brevity).
This conversation takes place on the night of the previous update so as to ensure that Noburi has a decision by the time he risks running into Tsunade. Accordingly, its normal XP award is already covered.
What do you do?
Voting ends on .
Kei was seeing to the handovers and contingencies for the Nara projects within her sphere of responsibility, especially the NFF and Project Synergy (in the unlikely event of her survival, it should be prepared for her journey to Mist by the time she returned), the usual mountains of KEI work, those elements of the Gōketsu finances that could not be entrusted to Gaku, and the regular check-in on Murai (monitoring whom was usually an ACC activity, but as the architect of Murai's warped lifestyle, Kei felt responsible for liaising with her personally). A hundred different tasks. Would the Nara stewards heed her injunctions with regard to Shikamaru's proper nutrition and sleeping hours, both of which invariably slipped as clan head duties accumulated, or should she put the fear of herself in them again? Perhaps she should prevail on Tenten to monitor their efforts on a periodic basis.
Meanwhile, Snowflake was in charge of liaising with Jin with regard to the ex-KEI adoptees, arranging protection and contingency plans for the Rainbow Fire (she pitied anyone who made a hostile move at a time when retribution would come not from herself but from Mari and Anko), internal polycule matters, a final safety check on Ami's leftover contingencies, and other miscellanea that did not require Kei's clearance or authority.
Nothing could be neglected. Hazō had not shared the details of the upcoming mission with the team, but the timing, and in fact the lack of detail, spoke for itself. This was an expedition beyond Akatsuki's reach, timed to maximise the interval until their next visit to Leaf (Kei having followed the last, an initial investigation into the village whose destruction she had permitted, as closely as she dared). Initially Kei had assumed that rift research would be the goal, since she did not truly believe Hazō would ever abandon his efforts. However, Hazō's nomination of Hyūga weighed the balance of probability towards weapons research in truth, in which case the special need to evade Akatsuki's notice made its intended target obvious.
In other words, Hazō and his chosen team were setting themselves directly against Akatsuki, on nothing more than the hope that countermeasures effective against a squad of demigods could be discovered before Akatsuki grew wise to their plans and found a means to compel their return for execution.
Kei should not have agreed. Kei had been suicidal to agree. So much rested on her shoulders that would be lost when she was murdered, to say nothing of the likelihood that her loved ones would be taken hostage to be used against her. She knew how competent Akatsuki were at torture from the darkness that sometimes surfaced behind Naruto's eyes, even at home, even among friends.
Kei should have sent her mother and her brother to their deaths as she and Snowflake sat at home in relative safety. It would have been the rational, responsible decision. She should have abandoned them as she had abandoned Ami. As her parents had abandoned her.
Motion triggered her paranoid missing-nin alertness as Noburi swung open the door with a performative abundance of energy.
"What's up, ladies and gentle–well, Hazō, anyway. Sorry to keep you waiting. Good news, my Tsunade-dodging game is at another level now. Bad news, she's Tsunade. I'll be counting on you guys to help me get out of this one."
Tractable problems.
"By all means, elaborate," Kei invited as Snowflake, sensitive to her mood as she could never be to anyone else's, subtly squeezed her hand. "I need not be convinced of the danger that exalted luminary poses to life and limb."
"Right," Noburi said, casting off his pack onto the floor with the sacrilegious thud of a grimoire carelessly treated. "Long story short, I'm in a bit of a pinch, courtesy of being just too talented for my own good. A couple of days ago, me and Hazō negotiated with Ma and Pa. Side note, it's weirdly relaxing being the one doing the optimising while Hazō's the one putting himself in the line of fire. I can see why you girls are so into it. Obviously, that made it a roaring success, which is to say Ma and Pa very reluctantly agreed to give Hazō some ninjutsu crafting lessons while we're away on the mission, and more importantly, I'm getting a trial run for hardcore Toad Sage training of the kind that turned Jiraiya into a legendary badass."
Classic Hazō. When the opportunity finally arose to dedicate himself to sealing research with only limited interruption (neither Kei nor Snowflake doubted that Noburi would soon bring word of a new crisis that their presence might have mitigated), he promptly deviated from the original plan to pursue a new and different ambition with wild abandon.
"From the fact that you mentioned Tsunade," Snowflake said, "I infer that she has a separate claim on your time which she naturally considers superior."
"Got it in one. Apparently, people have been pushing for her to take me on as an apprentice, and while she's not up for that, she's interested in doing research on my Bloodline Limit, which would still teach me a lot and would probably leave me with some amazing medical ninjutsu."
"And there's only one person who can push Tsunade in a way she'd even notice and who has a vested interest in Noburi being reliably on hand in the near future," Mari added.
Noburi looked at her silently. His expression fell.
"...yeah, OK. No point in pretending. It's a Barrel Boy thing, not an 'I want to work with Noburi' thing. Thanks for the reminder."
Kei and Snowflake gave Mari synchronised cold looks.
She shrugged. "You have to be clear on people's motivations before you can shape them the way you want."
"Either way," Hazō said quickly, "we're in a difficult situation where Noburi has to pick between two, well, three people who will all be seriously offended by a refusal and might refuse to deal with him again. We need solutions.
"My first thought is a Noburi timeshare. Maybe they could trade off days, or take half a day each? That would get us the best of both worlds."
Mari shook her head. "I don't see it. The Toad Sages taught Jiraiya. They'll be expecting total dedication, and frankly, the kind of training regime we're talking about needs to demand total dedication, or it's not worth your time. Trust an elite jōnin. If they came to you with a timeshare proposal, I'd assume they were fobbing you off."
"I would expect the training styles of ancient masters to be more optimised than those of contemporary jōnin," Kei objected, "especially contemporary jōnin who achieved that rank at a young age through prodigious talent and thus relied less on a well-developed training style than most of their fellows.
"On the other hand, I find it difficult, nay, impossible to imagine Tsunade accepting anything but absolute cooperation from any lowly mortal on whom she has deigned to bestow her time. She is not a woman of compromise."
"She must have patients she could look after in the downtime," Hazō said.
"Now that we have received unequivocal confirmation that Tsunade both possesses and has no philosophical compunctions over using the Shadow Clone Technique," Kei said, "it seems reasonable to assume that she could simply assign one or more shadow clones to ensuring that her hospital duties are uninterrupted, or vice versa."
"Actually," Noburi said, "that's one of the great unsolved mysteries of Senju Tsunade. You'd think they'd be massive for multiplying her medical skills, but until the battle, nobody knew for sure whether she used them at all–or at least nobody ever caught her in two places at the same time, or two of her in one place at the same time."
"Research, perhaps?" Snowflake speculated. "It would be a criminal waste of her abilities to spend all her time on individual patients at the hospital"–Noburi frowned, but didn't say anything–"and whom better to assign to work with hazardous substances and vicious disease spirits than a shadow clone whose suffering would be nothing to her?"
"Huh," Noburi said. "Now you say it out loud, it's kinda obvious. Also, uh, my condolences."
"It is what it is," Snowflake said. "I claim no right to speak for others of my kind, but I at least choose the suffering of this cruel world over the peace of oblivion every day."
It was one of the many mysteries of Snowflake that on rare occasion, her divergence looped in a perfect circle to being another Kei.
"I don't suppose," Hazō said speculatively, his gaze fixed on some distant plane of possibility, "we could just get them in a room together and have them talk it out like reasonable adults?"
…
"Nice one, Hazō," Mari said once the laughter settled down.
Kei, too, envied the extraordinary smoothness with which Hazō had dispelled the sombre mood created by Snowflake's words, and with deadpan in no way inferior to her own.
"...thanks," Hazō said after a second. "All right, why don't we get Naruto to meditate? If Mari's theory is right, he's willing to exert his authority to make this happen, and the Toad Sages seem to have a soft spot for him in a way they don't for us."
"Sure," Mari said, "but flip that around to what it would mean for us. Naruto must already have exhausted his pull with Tsunade if she didn't go for the apprentice idea, which could have kept Noburi under his thumb for years. The Sages might like him more, but that doesn't mean they want him meddling in business between them and their summoner. In return for nothing more than his personal charisma, we'd be losing face in front of both parties."
"What do you mean?"
"Just like what happens every time I go to negotiate on your behalf," Mari said. "Nobody bats an eye at a clan head sending his trained diplomat to persuade or negotiate in his stead, especially when the stakes are high, because using every resource at your disposal is how the game is played. But at the same time, it's a signal that you don't think you're good enough to get the job done yourself, and those signals accumulate. That's why other clan heads negotiate with you in person on anything big, even if they have social specs who could do a better job, and why I'm not constantly volunteering to handle clan PR."
"And not all because you'd rather laze around the house drinking hot chocolate and reading smut," Noburi clarified.
"Perish the thought," Mari agreed. "You take my point, though. If there's nothing Naruto can say to them that you couldn't say yourself, then you're just making yourself look weak by relying on him, in front of people whose limited respect you can't afford to lose."
"Furthermore," Kei said, "the core concept is critically flawed. Assuming Mari's theory regarding the Hokage's influence is correct, he has a compelling vested interest in Noburi accepting Tsunade's offer while rejecting–or being rejected by–the Toad Sages, at least for the time being."
"For the time being?" Hazō repeated. "Actually, that's a thought. Could we get the Toad Sages to put off the training by a couple of months, until Tsunade's done with her side?"
"Could go either way," Noburi said. "Maybe two months is nothing to them on account of their age, and they'll say whatever. Or maybe they'll be offended that I'm getting the offer of a lifetime and then trying to haggle because some slip of a girl on the Human Path wants to work with me on medical ninjutsu, which, by the way, they think I should drop because it's a dumb choice of discipline for a summoner and is stalling my growth.
"Slip of a girl?" Kei clarified.
"They're like six hundred years old," Noburi said. "To them, the difference between me and Tsunade is that one's an uppity toddler and the other is an uppity toddler who doesn't need to have a grown-up constantly holding her hand."
"Right," Hazō said. "Then I guess it comes down to pros and cons. The Toad Sages have a lot of marks in their favour. They taught Jiraiya, which is a great track record."
"A single data point cannot serve as a track record," Kei objected.
"Even if they spent years doing it?"
"Even then."
"Well, it proves they can be good teachers, anyway," Hazō said.
"It does no such thing," Kei said. "Certainly, the summoner position would have been an element in Jiraiya's rise to power, but it is beyond our means to select any given capability of his and reliably attribute it to the Toad Sages. Even his signature Toad ninjutsu could plausibly have been obtained from other summons; after all, I required no particular contacts to obtain one of the holy grails of shinobi warfare from the Pangolins."
"Fine," Hazō said. "But there are other reasons to be on their good side. They know a lot of eldritch lore they might be persuaded to share, ideally weaponisable eldritch lore. That's part of my goal in learning technique hacking from them, in fact–and that's another benefit which might get lost if we offend them. Noburi also needs to stay on good terms with them to remain the Toad Summoner."
"What? No, I don't."
Noburi gave Hazō a perplexed look. "Gamabunta's the one who decides my summoner status. I mean, if Ma and Pa decided they really hated me, they could tell him to cancel my contract and get a better summoner, but even then, I don't know if he'd go for it. The Toad Sages aren't sitting on his shoulders telling him what to do–they're a pair of powerful hermits living in the woods who we happen to know by sheer chance because of Jiraiya. It would be like Tsunade dictating terms to the Hokage."
"Which I can entirely see her doing," Hazō countered.
"Tsunade is strong enough to challenge the Hokage," Mari said. "She was certainly stronger than Asuma. But what that means politically is that if the Hokage thinks she's overreaching, he has to slap her down decisively or accept the erosion of his power–which is only a threat because she's a threat. We all saw what it was like when Orochimaru could walk all over Asuma. Unless Gamabunta's too dumb to live, he'll recognise what the precedent of letting the Sages pick the clan's summoner would mean for his authority and tell them to go screw themselves."
"Fine," Hazō said. "But still, we're potentially talking years of training here, compared to Tsunade's research, which has a definite end point when she thinks she's learned enough. At the same time, Noburi can't avoid Tsunade forever, and when she finds out he's turned her down, she's going to be furious."
"It occurs to me," Snowflake said, "that we may be dealing with an additional problem aside from Tsunade's fearsome ego. Unlike the Toad Sages, who have no particular stake in training Noburi beyond an abstract preference for a stronger summoner, Tsunade is presumably planning this Bloodline Limit research with the end goal of developing superior medical treatment for those in need. Refusal would then violate not only her sense of entitlement as Tsunade but also her sense of ethics as a doctor, which I imagine to be more powerful by an order of magnitude. If Noburi chooses to pursue training for pure personal power in preference to a project which would surely save many lives in the future…"
Kei nodded. "While the perpetual shortage of competent medic-nin leaves it unlikely that she would blacklist him from the medical profession entirely, the Queen of Doctors could reduce his hopes of professional advancement to ashes with a word."
"Shit," Noburi muttered. "I hadn't even thought of that."
"So that's a thing to put on one side of the scales," Hazō said into the grim silence. "Together with a lot of medical ninjutsu that there's really no way of getting elsewhere, at least if the Orochimaru option's not on the table–"
"It's not."
"–and the general benefits of Tsunade's reputation as a doctor. Noburi, you'd know better than me what those can do for you."
"Also the possibility of new Bloodline Limit applications, potentially eclipsing anything the Wakahisa were able to accomplish without the aid of an S-rank medical specialist," Kei added.
"Hey," Noburi exclaimed, "the Wakahisa have their own share of clan heroes. You realise somebody out there had to have invented the barrel seals, and with them the entire concept of carrying our chakra in a barrel? I dare Tsunade to try inventing practically a new Bloodline Limit."
"She did transplant the Sharingan that one time," Mari said.
"Yeah. One time. Do you have any idea what kind of medical breakthroughs we could've built on that? But no, she says it can't be done again, and she never shared the theory behind it, either. Who knows, maybe another genius medic-nin could've found a way to pull it off if she did. I mean, it's not like Hyūga really needs both eyes as long as he has the Byakugan."
"In fact," Kei opined, "I believe his experience of life would be greatly improved were he divested of all eyeballs in his possession, as well as any other senses you are able to extract. The man is an inexhaustible cornucopia of complaint about all that he surveys."
Hazō raised his eyebrows. "I didn't realise you two hung out together."
"Not by choice, I assure you. However, we are lamentably connected by Tenten in the manner of in-laws and by Hanabi in the manner of a master attempting to instruct her student while a foul, irritating, yet ultimately inconsequential insect bombinates around them."
"Normally," Noburi said, "interrupting a Hyūga-mocking session is the last thing I'd want to do, but this is kinda important, guys."
"Indeed," Kei said, generously refraining from mentioning that Noburi was the one originally responsible for the tangent. "We must also consider the disadvantages of selecting Tsunade, particularly those which are of import to our immediate objectives. Will the Toad Sages refuse to instruct Hazō in technique development if you spurn them, Noburi?"
Noburi thought about it.
"Probably not? They're separate agreements, and besides, I'd be the one taking the blame for picking Tsunade. I've got no reason to drag him down with me."
"On the other hand," Hazō said, "getting lore out of them relies purely on their goodwill, and that's going to dive like a chakra kingfisher spotting a cow if they decide Noburi's offended them by backing out of the side of the deal they actually care about."
"Do we have any reason whatsoever to believe that their lore will be of use for our specific purposes?" Kei asked.
"No, but given how old they are, some of what they know must be relevant, especially with regard to nature chakra. If they decide to withhold it, that could put Project Necromancy in danger."
"Project Necromancy? You mean to confirm that you are proceeding with rift research, in defiance of Akatsuki's restrictions?" Kei asked. "Or are you referring to some alternative contingency, such as–"
"Never mind," Hazō interrupted. "Let's not stray off topic. Noburi, I believe we've covered all the salient points. It's your choice, and you'll have our full support no matter what you decide."
"...my choice, huh?"
Noburi sat in silence, thinking.
Kei pondered choices of her own. It was entirely possible that her personal problems would be made moot by death on the Hyena front lines, her scheduled repayment of the debt incurred by Operation Murdersnout. Her demise would need to be communicated swiftly to Leaf, rendering her loved ones irrelevant as hostages (with the exception of those still being endangered by Hazō, notably Mari, Noburi, Yuno, and Ino), but that was easily accomplished. It would certainly be preferable to the most probable scenario of execution by Akatsuki after whatever means were necessary to compel her team's surrender.
Meanwhile, success was in many ways more frightening than failure, for it would leave the world as it had been once before, with weapons of unspeakable destruction in Hazō's hands, and Hazō in the hands of a Hokage fully cognizant of their power. This time, even assassination would not ensure containment, for Orochimaru also possessed the secrets of runecrafting, and proof of concept would render it even easier for him to replicate those weapons than it had been for Hazō to invent them.
Why had Ami left when she alone, with adroit advocacy and implementation of Operation A-Day, could have prevented this cataclysmic scenario from coming to pass?
Noburi stirred.
"I can do this."
"Do what?" Mari asked.
"I'm not giving up on being the next Tsunade or the next Jiraiya," Noburi said. "I'm going to go to Ma and Pa, and I'm going to wow them with the most masterful display of diplomacy the Toad Clan has ever seen, and I am going to convince them by hook or by crook to delay the start of the training until I've tied up my loose ends and can give them the ultimate fully-focused Noburi. Then I'm going to go to my loose end and work out a professional research schedule with a hard deadline on which I'll be able to kiss Tsunade goodbye and move on to my training come hell or high water."
"Perhaps reverse the order of those two?" Snowflake suggested. "You will be able to impress the Toad Sages more easily if you can make and keep a commitment to a specific date rather than vaguely requesting that they wait until you are available."
"Also," Kei advised, "I would refrain from any valedictory osculations. You will recall that reverse summoning fails if the target does not contain any of the blood used to sign the scroll."
"Good points all," Noburi agreed. "Thanks for your help, people. The countdown has officially begun to the birth of Hidden Leaf's fourth S-ranker."
-o-
You have received 1 XP (Brevity).
This conversation takes place on the night of the previous update so as to ensure that Noburi has a decision by the time he risks running into Tsunade. Accordingly, its normal XP award is already covered.
-o-
What do you do?
Voting ends on .
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is excellent. +5 XP to a player of your friend's choice.
You may wish to double-check the lyrics, as it sounds to me like "to research things" rather than "and research things".
No brevity huh? After I worked so hard on getting to down past 300...
Based on Stompy's plan(below), but without micromanaging things that the characters are better than us at anyways
[X] Action Plan: Go Get 'em, Tiger!
Word Count: 182
[X] Action Plan: Go Get 'em, Tiger!
Word Count: 182
- Noburi - Buy to maximum FP
- Optimize your approach with Mari, good luck.
- Ino
- say goodbye, give her the official line about our mission.
- Promise to send her weekly letters via the Seventh Path
- Give her a farewell bouquet.
- Themes - Love through adversity, love everlasting.
- Depart for the Gold Mine with Kei/Kagome
- Travel carefully and stealthily.
- let Kei/Kagome solve the details
- use Noburi's Chakra refills and ES to pull as much gold out of the mine as possible in a day.
- Kei/Kagome stand guard
- Give enough gold to Mari via Noburi that the Clan's liquidity is no longer an issue.
- We got the gold from Dog, obviously.
- Store the rest in Dog
- ask Kei to make plans for responsibly leveraging the whole sum of it.
- Travel carefully and stealthily.
- Head off on the research mission
- Again, travel carefully and leave no trail.
- Head for an isolated spot off the coast of Iron in Aisu Bay.
- Explain the mission
- Have Kagome and Kei go wild on defense/procedure planing.
- Suggest completely dissembling base when on 7th path, and Reverse Summoning away from above cloud layer
- Again, travel carefully and leave no trail.
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[X] Action Plan: Gold Rush
Word Count: 298
Word Count: 298
- Noburi - Buy 1 FP
- Optimize your approach with Mari, good luck.
- Ino
- Meet with her to say goodbye, give her the official line about our mission.
- Promise to send her weekly letters via the Seventh Path
- Give her a farewell bouquet. Cast the fertility jutsu on it.
- Themes - Love through adversity, love everlasting.
- Depart for the Gold Mine with Kei/Kagome
- Have Canvass check the team for unusual scents.
- Travel using skywalkers exclusively.
- Use dice to randomly break the trail near Leaf a few times.
- Establish a basic perimeter around the mine before starting extraction.
- Coordinate with Noburi for chakra. If he's still alive.
- For each cast of ES, concentrate the gold in the AoE into a small volume of earth.
- Use Earth Clones to dig up the highly concentrated gold-dirt mixture and store it in baskets.
- Bring extra shovels, baskets, and storage seals. Draw down the Seal Bank if necessary.
- Give enough gold to Mari via Noburi that the Clan's liquidity is no longer an issue.
- Suggest she pay civvie miners to finish the purification, and have the Tower mint it into ryo for a small fee.
- We got the gold from the Dogs, obviously.
- Suggest she pay civvie miners to finish the purification, and have the Tower mint it into ryo for a small fee.
- Store the rest in Dog.
- Head for the Skytower Research Base
- Same procedure as for heading to the gold mine
- Canvass, skywalkers, dice to randomize the trail a bit, etc.
- Head for an isolated spot off the coast of Iron in Aisu Bay.
- Exact location chosen at random
- Make sure the base is trapped when not in use.
- Let Kagome go wild, skyslicers, explosives, etc.
- Reverse Summon away from the base, in midair, in a spot chosen at random. Make sure that upon Unsummoning we can easily see if anyone has been to the base while we've been on the Seventh Path.
- Same procedure as for heading to the gold mine
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