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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Regarding the Snowflake thing, a thought:

If we ever do decide to defuse this bomb and talk to her about this, it should be done by creating a dedicated SC, having it engage in self-reflection for 11 hours (and therefore diverge from Prime as much as possible), then talking to her. We should also not specify any further what conclusions he comes to, so as to avoid triggering the obedience-to-Prime mechanism.

Talking to her about clones' experiences as Prime would likely be parsed as not unlike a slave owner assuring a human rights activist that his slaves are totally happy and want to work for him. In addition, spending a clone on this is good costly signalling, showing that Hazou takes her concerns seriously and has attempted to investigate them as much as he's able.
 
Kyreneryk said:
snips:
If I'm right about this, this would actually be a huge advantage, since it would allow us to switch on the rune with our allies inside, but it's worth noting that if you switch off the effect without taking action to confirm kills first (tossing kunai in or something) there's a significant risk that Akatsuki get right back up and keep on fighting, especially with chakra doing who knows what to ninja biology. (Also, the ~10,000-fold increase in viscocity you propose here may well be beyond Hazō's capabilities to achieve, but that's something we'd find out only by trying it.)
...
(Summary of consequence; this rune might be non-lethal, in that people removed from it might start up again without significant damage.)
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For the magnitude of effect:
Hazo could also go by way of a flat increase or a flat reference propagated outward rather than a relative shift like TR. Peanut butter and honey are rather common natural phenomena (though the former might not be in most EN), after all. Also, other seal/rune effects like "hardening air" to the level of granite (a 2,000x increase, which is within the order of magnitude we'd need in the worst case), iirc, suggest that either other large relative scaling instances are not as big of a deal as fiddling with time, or that he can do flat changes too. Either works fine.

Overall, I agree with your message, and thank you for engaging with the rune!

The peanut butter grade could indeed be an interesting instant biological stasis rune as you suggest. I am fine with that, though of course I too don't know what ninja physics will say in the end. ...But I would be glad to turn "extreme stakes rocket tag" to "pulling essie weeds".

I am now curious what you think about the honey grade. From my estimations, it stops or severely slows some macro and micro biological processes. This is because the diffusion coefficient formula I used also includes the size of the 'spherical' particle, which means that as we turn up the viscosity, processes using more complex particles will fail first.

So this could even happen way before honey, as our effect first stops organic molecules that are far larger than simple ions. I assume that the frontal lobe and the brainstem are the foremost targets for permanent damage here.

What are your thoughts on that?
 
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RandomOTP said:
I'm at work right now, but I'll go hunting for the quote later on... unless @faflec beats me to it, of course :p
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Velorien said:
The barrier was the phantasmal layer, a term coined by Moonlight (who had been assigned abstract creativity). Kei could read the sensory data of Snowflake's memories with little difficulty—she could see through past Snowflake's eyes, and hear through her ears, as if the memories were her own. But Snowflake's thoughts and feelings were unique to her, and when the incompletely human Keiko tried to remember the complete one's inner workings, she found them blurry, not absent but not quite real, a mirage recorded by a slightly different set of senses.

Snowflake, conversely, had perfect access, except to those points in time when Kei was actively using the Frozen Skein. Those were not even blurred but opaque within the phantasmal layer—they belonged to a domain into which ordinary humans such as Snowflake (hilarious, no?) could not and must not trespass. Snowflake was glad not to know the Mori Voice, the predator every Mori knew to be their final end (for when death came for them and their loved ones, who would not dive into the ice one last time to seek a way to save them?). She had more mixed feelings about the crystalline clarity that Kei revered and she could never touch, but in the end she would sacrifice it a thousand times over for the miracle of undistorted agency.
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This is not the quote, this is me being confused because Kei and Snowflake have imperfect access to each other's memories as they relate to the Frozen Skein and its effects.
 
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Bonus Update: Schrödinger’s Farewell
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    • Bonus Update: Schrödinger's Farewell​

    Envelope A (READ THIS FIRST)

    If you are reading this, I assume you are following Contingency P27 as instructed. If not, stop reading immediately and do not resume until the P27 protocols are in effect. They are to remain in effect until you have finished reading the messages indicated at the end of this letter, as well as during any subsequent discussion.


    Dear Tenten and Miyuki,

    I wish this were another social letter, sharing trivial anecdotes from my mission while awkwardly circumnavigating the endlessly deep whirlpool of how much I miss you. Unfortunately, this is the other kind of letter.

    As you are aware, I am presently on a self-assigned long-term research mission, serving as advisor and bodyguard to Hazō alongside Kagome. For both your safety and ours, I cannot yet provide additional details, save to say that this mission is essential to Leaf's welfare and potentially its survival. If this seems like hyperbole, recall that Hazō is the inventor of skywalkers, which transformed the face of warfare, and skyslicers, which have slain vast alien abominations and Akatsuki members both, as well as other exceptional seals whose time, I fear, will yet come.

    Now, Uchiha Itachi has demanded our return for interrogation, at which time he will judge our mission to be a threat to Akatsuki and eliminate us, even at the risk of reprisal from Leaf. Just as transpired immediately after the Seventh's murder, the Hokage was threatened with Leaf's annihilation and submitted to the demand.

    Our mission remains our priority, and we cannot continue it if assassinated or in Akatsuki's hands. Thus, we have elected to defy the Hokage's unwilling order. In other words, we have gone missing.

    To recapitulate, all of us remain loyal to the Village Hidden in the Leaves. We recognise the Eighth Hokage as our legitimate leader, and our only goal is to protect the village we have come to love and the many people with whom we have forged deep bonds. We believe that completing this mission is the best way to do so, and that the Hokage would agree wholeheartedly were he not being forced to choose between us and Leaf's immediate survival.

    Thus we come to the important part. We believe that as soon as Akatsuki recognise that we do not intend to return, they will seize those close to us for both interrogation and leverage. Our immediate family are already preparing to leave Leaf without the Hokage's knowledge and join us on the mission. I wish urge you to do likewise.

    I appreciate the magnitude of the request. To any shinobi raised in Leaf, this is a betrayal of the Will of Fire and of all one's comrades. I do not ask this of you lightly. However, we are confident that if you remain in Leaf, you will be abducted and tortured or killed. Akatsuki retain the legal right to enter and leave Leaf at will, and as you can see, the Hokage is unable to reject a demand that can be expected to result in our deaths. It pains me to say this, but if this is true for Gōketsu Hazō and Nara Kei, it will certainly be true for Tenten and Fujisawa Miyuki–or if not officially, then in the dead of night, or when you next leave Leaf on a mission.

    I am not inviting you to hide in the woods (though if that is your choice, I will accept it). I am inviting you to participate in a mission we believe worth bringing Akatsuki's full wrath down on ourselves. We are confident that, should it succeed, the Hokage will have both the will and the ability to repatriate us as heroes–and you, should you decide to join us. However, even were it not so, we would persevere. Leaf's future requires us to succeed, even if we cannot be part of it.

    If you choose to leave, open Envelope B and destroy Envelopes C1 and C2 unread. If you choose to remain, open Envelopes C1 (Miyuki) and C2 (Tenten) and destroy Envelope B unread.

    I do not pray, but please know that, whatever you decide, your safety is foremost in my thoughts.

    Kei
    -o-​

    Envelope B (READ ENVELOPE A FIRST)

    [several maps of rendezvous points, with associated meeting times]

    [a number of exfiltration plans, each over 300 words]

    [preparations and equipment checklist for first-time missing-nin]

    -o-​

    ENVELOPE C1 (FOR MIYUKI; READ ENVELOPE A FIRST)

    Dear Miyuki,

    If you are reading this, then this is likely our farewell. In the future I dream of, I will return to Leaf triumphant, only to perish of embarrassment when I face a Miyuki who has read this letter. As ever, I write on the assumption that my dream will not come true.

    I am appalling at opening my heart to others. I do so with excruciating slowness. I fear that my hope, a candle flame I can barely light and must shield with my entire body lest it flicker, will be extinguished by reality. I fear that I will be rejected as the other recognises the self-evident truth that there is nothing in me worth loving, and then I will have no choice but to accept it myself once again. I fear that I will accept the other as part of my own heart, only to be abandoned, to be made forever less, and to take another step down the path to the self-chosen isolation that I once believed to be my fate.

    Thus, I hope you understand what it means for me to confess that over the last year, perhaps even longer given my atrocious self-awareness, I have been gradually falling in love with you.

    It has been a slow and difficult process, marked by extensive denial and futile bursts of resistance. It has also been as inexorable as the erosion of rocks to sand, as rain falling from the clouds, as the coming of adulthood. Still, I find myself wishing that I live long enough to complete it.

    I have attempted and failed to resist your optimism, like the dance of refracted sunlight that never stops long enough to burn. I have attempted and failed to resist your determination, unyielding once you have identified your heart's desire, no matter how much that heart's desire may seek to keep you at arm's length. I have attempted and failed to resist your inner strength, your indomitable smile in the face of a past darker than mine and chains whose weight you feel not when you stop to reflect, but in every social interaction. I have attempted and failed to resist your endless well of idiosyncratic creativity, your thousand prisms through which I see worlds I did not know existed within my own.

    Here and now, when it is too late, I admit defeat. If we meet again, I will finally surrender to you.

    Kei


    I am aware that you do not know how you feel about me, Miyuki, and in truth, I do not know how I feel about you. How do I tell which sparks are mine, or how many, within the blazing fire of Kei's feelings?

    Still, I wish to learn. Belatedly for many of the same reasons as Kei, and more hopeless ones besides, I wish to learn. That is all that I can offer you because that is all that I have. There is still precious little for you to learn about me, and I cannot conceive of what I could offer you that Kei cannot. But at least you have my curiosity, and that is mine alone. Of the countless thousands of people in this world, you are one of the special few of whom I am keen to learn more. You are one of the special few with whom I wish to define a relationship, and explore it to whatever depth we are capable of reaching together.

    This is my heart. Please accept it.

    Snowflake

    -o-​

    Envelope C2 (FOR TENTEN; READ ENVELOPE A FIRST)

    I promise.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Velorien said:
    As you are aware, I am presently on a self-assigned long-term research mission, serving as advisor and bodyguard to Hazō alongside Kagome. For both your safety and ours, I cannot yet provide additional details, save to say that this mission is essential to Leaf's welfare and potentially its survival. If this seems like hyperbole, recall that Hazō is the inventor of skywalkers, which transformed the face of warfare, and skyslicers, which have slain vast alien abominations and Akatsuki members both, as well as other exceptional seals whose time, I fear, will yet come.

    Now, Uchiha Itachi has demanded our return for interrogation, at which time he will judge our mission to be a threat to Akatsuki and eliminate us, even at the risk of reprisal from Leaf. Just as transpired immediately after the Seventh's murder, the Hokage was threatened with Leaf's annihilation and submitted to the demand.

    Our mission remains our priority, and we cannot continue it if assassinated or in Akatsuki's hands. Thus, we have elected to defy the Hokage's unwilling order. In other words, we have gone missing.

    To recapitulate, all of us remain loyal to the Village Hidden in the Leaves. We recognise the Eighth Hokage as our legitimate leader, and our only goal is to protect the village we have come to love and the many people with whom we have forged deep bonds. We believe that completing this mission is the best way to do so, and that the Hokage would agree wholeheartedly were he not being forced to choose between us and Leaf's immediate survival.
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    So, uh, this isn't going to have consequences if Itachi does capture and interrogate Tenten or Miyuki, and gets knowledge of this letter, is it? Because it really sounds like Naruto's in on what Hazou is doing, from my POV.
     
    Would applying the viscosity rune to the air instead not stop explosions? Severely cut down on their radius maybe...


    Or would it have the opposite effect, especially at lower magnitudes? Like dynamite fishing.
     
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    faflec said:
    So, uh, this isn't going to have consequences if Itachi does capture and interrogate Tenten or Miyuki, and gets knowledge of this letter, is it? Because it really sounds like Naruto's in on what Hazou is doing, from my POV.
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    Not really, I think?
    • The mission is described as "self-assigned".
    • The statement that it's essential to Leaf's survival is something Kei claims on her own.
    • Naruto yielding to Itachi's demands over this mission doesn't imply that he knew its importance (and is, indeed, weak evidence otherwise).
    • Kei's statement that Itachi will eliminate us is something she predicts, not something she claims Naruto was aware of.
    • Kei claims to straightforwardly defy Naruto's order, rather than suggesting it's not a real order – as would indeed be the case if Naruto didn't know the mission's true purpose or the threat to us: he would genuinely order our return.
    • The statement that we remain loyal and recognize the Hokage as our legitimate leader does subtly hint that we're not actually doing treason, but it's also easily interpreted as a traitor's self-justifications, especially given the previous claim of outright refusing his order.
    • The statement that Naruto would agree that our mission is of utmost importance (and later statements that he'd assist with our repatriation) is implicitly talking about hypothetical Narutos who were aware of the mission's purpose, not the actual Naruto.
      • Although the phrasing there is indeed a bit off.
    Overall, this letter seems consistent with what a Kei who was sold on one of the Treason Dragon's insane plans would write. Delusions of grandeur, a belief that we know better than our military dictators, overconfidence regarding said military dictators recognizing how right we were, etc.
     
    Sending ninja on missions and declaring them missing-nin when some condition is reached isn't new.

    Asuma did it originally for the Arachnid scroll:
    eaglejarl said:
    If the Gōketsu want their shiny toy, they're going to have to be the ones to bleed for it, and if you get caught then I'm going to claim that you went rogue.
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    I think someone is going to try to unmake Naruto as Hokage. He has a terrible track record, first Ami and now us.

    Ritsuo Hokage it is.
     
    MarsIronPI said:
    @strange_person, would you make a summary of your localized superchiller rune idea? I think it's worth pursuing.
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    Basketweaver's Bane
    rune
    Starts out identical to the existing Air Dome Rune. While intact, self-repair function is redirected to "solidify" fastest-moving air molecules inside the dome at any given time, continually picking new fastest ones, releasing those which slowed down or were touched by any other chakra effect. Complex meddling with long-tail statistical thermo adds up to a simple result: all else being equal, average air temperature inside cools by 1 degree C per second, hot spots first.

    Original concept here Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest explaining intended physical and tactical results.
     
    Velorien said:
    For those of us who refuse to accept a future determined by Pain, there is no third option.
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    I wonder how much of Kei's concern stems from her pathological need to be the one in control….

    It's not as if she has anywhere near enough information to accurately predict what happens after Pain revives.
     
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    Noumero said:
    Not really, I think?
    • The mission is described as "self-assigned".
    • The statement that it's essential to Leaf's survival is something Kei claims on her own.
    • Naruto yielding to Itachi's demands over this mission doesn't imply that he knew its importance (and is, indeed, weak evidence otherwise).
    • Kei's statement that Itachi will eliminate us is something she predicts, not something she claims Naruto was aware of.
    • Kei claims to straightforwardly defy Naruto's order, rather than suggesting it's not a real order – as would indeed be the case if Naruto didn't know the mission's true purpose or the threat to us: he would genuinely order our return.
    • The statement that we remain loyal and recognize the Hokage as our legitimate leader does subtly hint that we're not actually doing treason, but it's also easily interpreted as a traitor's self-justifications, especially given the previous claim of outright refusing his order.
    • The statement that Naruto would agree that our mission is of utmost importance (and later statements that he'd assist with our repatriation) is implicitly talking about hypotheticalNarutos who were aware of the mission's purpose, not the actual Naruto.
      • Although the phrasing there is indeed a bit off.
    Overall, this letter seems consistent with what a Kei who was sold on one of the Treason Dragon's insane plans would write. Delusions of grandeur, a belief that we know better than our military dictators, overconfidence regarding said military dictators recognizing how right we were, etc.
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    I think you're spinning this to much in an optimisitc way. Itachi can very easily use that information and claim that Naruto is breaking the agreement by letting us go and start another investigation into a Hokage.

    We just saw that Naruto folded under Itachi. And the rest of AMITY has their own ambitions.

    Naruto is far from some political mastermind, I think he chew more than he can handle but we see.

    edit: Havin Mari and Noburi leave might help the case that we're going rouge, so there is that.
     
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    ContextBot said:
    I think you're spinning this to much in an optimisitc way. Itachi can very easily use that information and claim that Naruto is breaking the agreement by letting us go and start another investigation into a Hokage.
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    How is Naruto letting us go? He ordered us to go back (which an uninformed!Naruto wouldn't expect to result in us going missing, so the order is perfectly fine), and he's going to send hunter-nin after us once we go missing. And him letting us go on a self-assigned research mission to begin with isn't an issue either – what was he supposed to do, ban us from doing any research forever?

    I agree that the Akatsuki will be pissed and will try to spin it their way, but I don't think there are many glaring openings, in the narrative spun thus far.
    We just saw that Naruto folded under Itachi. And the rest of AMITY has their own ambitions.

    Naruto is far from some political mastermind, I think he chew more than he can handle but we see.
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    Oh, I don't argue that he's screwed. He's totally going to let it leak that he assigned us this mission, when pressed by Itachi. RIP.
     
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    Noumero said:
    How is Naruto letting us go? He ordered us to go back (which an uninformed!Naruto wouldn't expect to result in us going missing, so the order is perfectly fine), and he's going to send hunter-nin after us once we go missing. And him letting us go on a self-assigned research mission isn't an issue either – what was he supposed to do, ban us from doing any research forever?
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    Itachi was also groomed to be Hokage and a clan head one day. He knows the difference between bullshit propaganda and the reality of ninja villages.

    Locking down the other Goketsu or assigning an loyal ninja that wouldn't go along with us going missing nin (that we might need to cripple or kill) would prove that Naruto was serious at keeping us under control.

    I will give you that Itachi sees Hazou as treason prone and grabbing a bunch of Leaf nin makes it more believable.

    Noumero said:
    what was he supposed to do, ban us from doing any research forever?
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    Why not? Itachi said we should do uplift things, letting Kagome research pro-uplift seals would likely be enough.

    Noumero said:
    Oh, I don't argue that he's screwed. He's totally going to let it leak that he assigned us this mission, when pressed by Itachi. RIP.
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    I mean, that's my point. Itachi will bend his arguments to screw Naruto.
     
    DanZapman said:
    Do you have any specific reason for this to be a concern or is this sourceless paranoia? Mari having memory hax is explicitly breaking normal genjutsu rules and I wouldn't expect by default for two genjutsu essies to have the same hack.
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    I don't have a concrete source, but I have this feeling that the Sharingan would be able to do stuff like that. It's probably paranoid but checking for memory manipulation doesn't cost us too much.

    Velorien said:
    [several maps of rendezvous points, with associated meeting times]
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    OK, we should ask Kei what these are then.

    Velorien said:
    [a number of exfiltration plans, each over 300 words]
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    If Kei had written plans <300 words would she have gotten bonus XP?

    Velorien said:
    [preparations and equipment checklist for first-time missing-nin]
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    Wait, that's Hazō's shtick. Kei's not allowed to use lists!
     
    MarsIronPI said:
    I don't have a concrete source, but I have this feeling that the Sharingan would be able to do stuff like that. It's probably paranoid but checking for memory manipulation doesn't cost us too much.


    OK, we should ask Kei what these are then.


    If Kei had written plans <300 words would she have gotten bonus XP?


    Wait, that's Hazō's shtick. Kei's not allowed to use lists!
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    PONWOG Kei got the rest of the team to sanity-check Envelope B. There would be no reason not to seek all the optimisation she could get, and her girlfriends' lives were potentially at stake.
     
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