When/which witnesses saw this?
-
Going forward, links to content from Twitter (now X) will no longer be embedded. Pre-existing links should not be affected.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 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
- Location
- Yes.
How do we know Itachi wanted Hazou to join Akatsuki?
- Location
- Texas
He doesn't want or need Hazo as a slave. Sasori is more than capable of opening the Rift.
I think Itachi honestly had a good opinion of Hazo due to his drive to improve the world. He likely thought that Hazo might say yes and join the Akatsuki in Truth. It is not like Hazo's deceit would allow him to successfully lie to Itachi.
He was almost right. There was a significant (though still a minority) chunk of the player base that would have willingly joined.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I think Hidan's behaviour in this scheme is a lot less predictable than it may appear in retrospect.
Hidan's big sticking point in that conversation was that Asuma lied. Hidan's a very honest guy who goes with his gut, and if he didn't see any dishonesty in Asuma's words I think it's pretty likely if anything he would play defense for Asuma. And moreover, with Asuma facing down two Akatsuki members he ought to be desperate to prove his innocence: maybe it's possible to imagine Asuma having reason to clam up that hard about something related to the case, but if I was in Itachi's shoes and didn't know about EM I certainly wouldn't call it likely.
EM was implicated in the case, therefore Asuma couldn't tell the full truth even with Death and Taxes staring him in the face, therefore Hidan called him a liar and went aggro. The chain of causality there is pretty tight and not easy to predict from an outside perspective. I do not think it likely that anyone without knowledge of EM could have reliably predicted what happened, even in broad strokes.
So imo if we believe Itachi to be the culprit here we must expect him to have planned a completely different outcome, most likely the arrest of Asuma or something similar. I'm not super sold that something like that would be sufficient to extract rift research from Leaf, since the only way he got it in our timeline is because the Akatsuki held a gun to Leaf's head and threatened its destruction if it didn't pay up. I could see them demanding reparations, I agree, but I don't think Itachi would see this as a viable route to getting our rift research. At least, not in its own right, but I'd have to start imposing further complexity penalties if we're supposing this was only one half of an even more convoluted scheme.
Oh, also, even if he managed to predict that Hidan would kill Asuma, that doesn't intrinsically lead to Itachi getting the rift research. He said it himself: if Kakuzu hadn't died, the death of Asuma would have been seen as an acceptable price for Leaf to pay. In the world where Hidan kills Asuma, it's far from a given that either Hidan or Kakuzu die on their way out. In fact, given how they're the "zombie combo" it must have seemed very likely that they would be able to escape. A world where Asuma dies but neither of the Akatsuki die is a world where Itachi has precious little leverage against Leaf, again maybe enough for ordinary reparations but much less likely to be enough for "demanding all the secret research the village has on this topic" demands.
Overall, Itachi is one of the leading suspects in my mind, but that's not saying much. There is at present no candidate theory that I feel doesn't have major holes in it, and the Itachi theory is no exception. It's not so hole-riddled as to be out of the question, but I do not feel as if I can place any confidence in it at this point in time. The one thing I will say with confidence is that the true culprit either knew about EM or had no way of knowing the meeting would go the way it did. "To figure out a strange plot, look at what happens, then ask who benefits" is sound advice in general, but it presumes the plotter is capable of accurately predicting the outcome. When the outcome was genuinely provably unpredictable, that maxim loses reliability quickly (though it does retain some merit, as the plotter is also likely to be in position to capitalize on unexpected outcomes, which is why I still rate the Itachi theory fairly highly).
Wow, I hadn't considered this. I thought the capture of Akane was unsuccessful because she burned herself to death with Flame Aura or something. But… what if it's actually a successful capture, successfully framed as a failed capture? This would also be a satisfying explanation for this:
My other explanation for this is, Itachi knows he doesn't have a good enough scent-masking mean to foil the best dogs. (The reason he managed to pull off the shirt framing is that he went through Kurenai, whose scent is as non-suspicious as it gets.) So he sends agents whose scents won't get linked back to him, and relies on skywalker use near multiple borders to break up the trail so that they can then bring Akane to the actual destination. If this had succeeded, Canvass would have told us that Akane was still alive and captured, but we still wouldn't have known who did it nor where she ended up.
Same guys who told Hazo about the rest of Asuma's murder. Vague memory is that Hidan got real agitated when Asuma maintained innocence and kept insisting Jashin had guided Hidan to Asuma. If the source of info is unreliable there they're unreliable for that overall update. Which isn't the same as trusting them, mind you.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
To be fair, our Resolve didn't do shit against Orochimaru's Intimidation.
If we assume that Itachi (who isn't a Sannin) has genjutsu at least as high as Orochimaru's primary social attack, then we're still screwed...
Itachi is mid-20s and spreading his pyramid across a billion different things, I strongly doubt he's up to par to the Sannin.
Didn't we successfully weather Orochimaru's intimidation when we were trying to negotiate with him? We were intimidated before we pumped up Resolve big time.
Despite what I said above, I also wouldn't doubt Itachi's capabilities. Orochimaru outright said that Itachi was stronger than him, despite being almost three decades his elder. I wouldn't say he has every capability under the sun, but I'd assume his focuses are very strong.
I'm thinking about XP totals- Orochimaru focused more on not dying than anything else, and Itachi focused on being an offensive threat. Still, fair to assume his genjutsu is especially strong, yeah. Alas. Still think we'd have a shot.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I have two extra things to say about this. The first has been said before and is unlikely to be new information, but bears repeating nonetheless. The latter is the kind of fuzzy thing that relates to the mechanical abstraction layer between us and the in-universe happenings of the quest. Neither are conclusive, but I think both are important context.
The first is that there is at present no evidence that Itachi was the one who initiated the genjutsu. This matters. Genjutsu is a fundamentally asymmetric discipline: rather than genjutsu opening up a channel through which mental warfare can ensue, with the strongest mind winning the mental armwrestling contest, the use of genjutsu opens up a one-way channel which the opponent must break free of before they can do anything, no matter how skilled they themselves are at genjutsu.
If Itachi initiated genjutsu against Kurenai, Kurenai would have to break free before retaliating. If Kurenai initiated genjutsu against Itachi, Itachi would have to break free before retaliating. In both cases we would see exactly the same physical evidence that we got in the update: the two of them are staring at each other. So while it is certainly possible that Itachi cast a genjutsu on Kurenai, it is by no means certain that he cast any genjutsu during the fight at all.
The second point is that the Battle of the Gods was run through a complex battle simulator, not hand-simulated. I can say with some confidence that, at least on the mechanical level of who took damage when during the fight, the suggested scheme of Itachi turning Kurenai against the allies would not be mechanically supported. I've seen some sample output lines from the simulator and it doesn't even track who hit who: there was no point during the mechanical crunch of that fight where Itachi in particular hit anyone, let alone Kurenai.
That is to say, aside from the overall outcome and the question of who took damage when, everything else about the Battle of the Gods was added by the QMs post-facto. Kakashi, Sasori, and Gai all died in relatively quick succession, so we got a scene where Sasori kills Kakashi and Gai sacrifices himself in revenge. Jiraiya only barely didn't make it to the end of the fight, so he gets a tragic death scene near the very end of the fight. The Itachi vs. Kurenai line may not even correspond to any output line of the simulation, and have just been added as fluff: one of the many things going on in the midst of the big fight.
Of course, the opposite perspective here is that because it is fluff perhaps the QMs intended for it to have greater meaning, but I think such reasoning is more shaky than not. Especially when the line does look like a relatively straightforward fluff line, an amusing contrast to the rest of the battle that could have very easily just sprung to mind during the writing of the update. It could be more than that, but it also needn't be.
When I put those two points together, and this is mostly just my own reaction to them, I see a line that the QMs probably didn't intend any greater meaning behind, that doesn't even necessarily depict Itachi using genjutsu on Kurenai, and I can only really see it being turned into this big conspiracy shindig post-facto: I have a hard time seeing them as having decided on that scheme when the line was being written. And it just doesn't really feel like the sort of post-facto change they'd make easily, since Itachi turning Kurenai into a long-term sleeper agent is a very serious plot event with far-reaching consequences and I know they don't take those lightly. It might still have happened, perhaps, but my overall estimation is "unlikely".
Fair enough. Given that Hidan explicitly had Asuma's blood and was acting weird at the confrontation, I think we can pare the theory down to Itachi just genjutsu'ing Hidan and still explain everything relevant (except who the Tower mole is) while remaining much more plausible.
So... any ideas about the mole?
So... any ideas about the mole?
In this world, I imagine that Itachi comes to Leaf in order to investigate whether Hidan and Kakuzu were in their right to kill Asuma, or Akatsuki committed a crime. This at least gives him an occasion to discuss with Hazo to try and estimate how far he is into rift research, invite him to join Akatsuki, threaten him into stopping the research. But he's smarter than me, so he can probably do better than that.
I do agree that it's a somewhat risky plan for Itachi, with uncertain rewards. But the risks are not that great either – he's probably not personally at risk, whereas the potential rewards bring him closer to seeing Nagato again. I'm not sure what he considers the worst likely outcome: AMITY implodes? Sasuke dies as collateral damage? Both have the same solution: bring Nagato / Sasuke back from the dead.
I like your "in position to capitalize on unexpected outcomes" phrasing, it's clear and concise
- Location
- Texas
An alternative mind control target is perhaps Ami. She allegedly pissed Itachi off at some point during her ambassadorial duties. She also ran the fuck away from Leaf when she first cast SC. Perhaps her clone was not mind controlled, but was also incapable of breaking the control on Ami Prime. The SC would have had to convince Ami to run away without actively working against Itachi.
Ami is capable of a lot and there's a worrying thought about her clone, but how much Tower access did Ami ever have?
I agree. That's why I only consider the scene evidence that Itachi would have had an opportunity to mind control Kurenai, and it would have been consistent with the other things we observed. I did read the alternate explanations back when this was discussed after the Akatsuki dossiers interlude. If I hadn't, I would have put much higher odds on the mind control theory, and explicitly presented it as the only possible way to explain what was observed.
(This should probably have been part of my initial post, with quotes to the best alternate explanation posts, but I forgot, and it already took me much too long to write)
That's indeed very pertinent information I didn't have. It's still possible that the QMs had already established that Itachi had this ability, and when they were fluffing out the outcome, they decided that Kurenai was a good target for it, and oh look, she survived the battle (and Asuma too but not that many other influential people from Leaf), this is going to have interesting repercussions, let's add some teasers.
But I agree that it makes it much less likely than I thought.
Another possibility is that Kurenai became controlled at a later date (during AMITY diplomacy?), and this scene is just a funny coincidence – or possibly what made the QM later think hey, Kurenai would make a good mind-control target for Itachi – and/or what made Itachi himself notice that Kurenai could be a valuable asset.
Let's see, if we assume that Itachi did frame Assuma, then Bayes says I put about 60% odds on mind-controlled Kurenai… Yeah, sounds about right. It does make it trivial for him to plant the bloodied shirt in the Sarutobi compound without leaving any clues for Canvass. This is an otherwise hard thing to do. It also explains the intel leaks. Itachi just genjutsu'ing Hidan doesn't explain any of these.
The non-Kurenai explanation for the shirt is that he has a very good jutsu for erasing scents, and we have no unrelated reasons to think he has one. But ok, why not, it's Itachi after all, so it's not really surprising, but it does have a complexity cost too. I wonder, would Cloak of the Reaper be enough to do this without leaving any scents noticeable from Canvass? It says "minimizing scent traces". Maybe it's enough to beat Inuzuka dogs, but Canvass is supposed to be in another league. If it's a CotR vs Canvass nose skill roll, I would expect Canvass to win even with maluses from time passed between the infiltration and the inquiry.
Note that this is my take without having updated from the simulator insights from @Inferno Vulpix and various other new elements such as Itachi having possibly managed to actually capture Akane alive, what might have happened or not back in O'uzu, etc. I haven't thought much either on the implications of Itachi having genjutsued Hidan, I just gave the arguments I already had for why Itachi being the culprit makes the Kurenai thing more probable. This is all a problem for tomorrow-me, and I should really go to sleep now.
Last edited:
I agree it would be "funny" in the sense that she has no reason to do it, and it was disastrous for us on the whole
- Location
- Yes.
Besides revenge for Akane's murder?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
As someone who tends to take an extreme view of the Akatsuki's capabilities and advises to be maximally paranoid regarding them: I'm very skeptical that Itachi has mind-control abilities comprehensive and long-lasting enough to pull off any of that.
Here's what Oro actually said about him:
I predict that something similar is at play with the purported mind-control ability (if it's even real; Oro notes any of that might be smoke-and-mirrors). We're given this abbreviated description, and in the spirit of paranoia, assume it really has no limits and is the most unconstrained large-scale version of itself it can be. But I expect there's an unsaid, implicit constraint along the lines of "works only for 1d4 rounds" or something.
It can still be exploited very massively for strategic-scale stuff, like making an interrogation victim spill the beans better than any torture, or more subtly, to force people on specific plausible life paths with utter certainty. (E. g., Itachi using it on Hazou to nudge him into accepting the Akatsuki's offer to join as possible example. He didn't do it, but if he did, it's not necessary that Hazou would've even noticed, since it was something he would've plausibly done (unless the mind-control is very noticeable internally). And afterwards, he'd be locked into this path. Stuff like this: subtly but implacably warping social structures into plausible-but-desired configurations, with multiplicative effects.)
But I think the current state of affairs is inconsistent with Itachi having long-term total mind control. Even if it's limited to a few targets at a time... I dunno, I have a feel we'd be living in a very different world. The Akatsuki would have deeply-rooted control over the EN, not just based on biggest-stick diplomacy. (Say, the BotG? Never would've happened, because they would've mind-controlled the villages into failing to coordinate.)
Here's what Oro actually said about him:
We also know he has precognition. If we were informed about it the same way, it'd sound like this:
See what this phrasing does? Sounds scary. Is scary. But the way it's phrased makes it seem much scarier than it actually is, because it omits the main limitation: the predictions' time horizon is, optimistically, one minute into the future. It's a lethal tactical tool, and clever use can have strategic implications. But it's not "strategic-scale" by default: it doesn't let Itachi predict the fate of nations over years-long horizons, say. And indeed, the current state of affairs is very inconsistent with Itachi having this sort of ability.
I predict that something similar is at play with the purported mind-control ability (if it's even real; Oro notes any of that might be smoke-and-mirrors). We're given this abbreviated description, and in the spirit of paranoia, assume it really has no limits and is the most unconstrained large-scale version of itself it can be. But I expect there's an unsaid, implicit constraint along the lines of "works only for 1d4 rounds" or something.
It can still be exploited very massively for strategic-scale stuff, like making an interrogation victim spill the beans better than any torture, or more subtly, to force people on specific plausible life paths with utter certainty. (E. g., Itachi using it on Hazou to nudge him into accepting the Akatsuki's offer to join as possible example. He didn't do it, but if he did, it's not necessary that Hazou would've even noticed, since it was something he would've plausibly done (unless the mind-control is very noticeable internally). And afterwards, he'd be locked into this path. Stuff like this: subtly but implacably warping social structures into plausible-but-desired configurations, with multiplicative effects.)
But I think the current state of affairs is inconsistent with Itachi having long-term total mind control. Even if it's limited to a few targets at a time... I dunno, I have a feel we'd be living in a very different world. The Akatsuki would have deeply-rooted control over the EN, not just based on biggest-stick diplomacy. (Say, the BotG? Never would've happened, because they would've mind-controlled the villages into failing to coordinate.)
Last edited:
- Location
- Yes.
I know it's not how this works, but your post made me think of this story way back when. Specifically, Black.
Assuming he did kill Akane, I think Mari is both pragmatic and cold-blooded enough to choose her moment better, she absolutely had to know that fucking around with Akatsuki ran the risk of getting Leaf destroyed and herself and her family killed. She's smarter than that.
NB: Hidan has previously been able to sneak through Leaf to surprise Hazo, but the Sarutobi clan lord's personal quarters are a step up from there.
- Location
- Yes.
DIdn't he only do that while we were in the Shimura estate, which is outside of the walls?