OK. Analysis time. I'm going to try to put on my Jiraiya hat and think about this from his perspective. Hopefully this helps. Apologies for messy formating, I'm on a phone.
Radvic's Analysis of Jiraiya, and potential solutions
Personality:
OOC, we know Jiraiya is 'good' in some way. He's generally a nice guy, amiable, but fiercely loyal to Leaf and competent. All this checks out with things we've observed thus far of Jiraiya's actions.
Evidence:
- "I like this team" - in response to Keiko attempting to defend Inoue
- Jovial tone in all our face to face interactions
- Warning about not trying to take over the world
- "No unknowing suicide missions"
Motives:
OOC, I don't know of any special motives of Jiraiya. IC, we know he is a Leaf-nin, so serving Leaf is probably his highest motive. After that, he seems to want the world to be better (or at least not worse?)
Evidence:
- Is high ranking Leaf-nin
- Runs spy network, presumably for Leaf
- Seemed sad Orochimaru decided not to care about people
- Seems to be actively attempting to prevent the next ninja war
Current concerns:
We know some of Jiraiya's specific concerns. He initially found us while investigating Iron, and was probably concerned about our loose canon status. After solving both these problems handily, he probably mostly put us out of his mind and returned to his other duties. Exactly what those are is mildly unclear. His next interaction with us is to send us an angry message. So, he's unhappy with what we did.
Evidence
- He found us
- He used us
- He paid us off
- He paid us little mind (didn't return our message initially)
- Fairly immediately made the connection we were responsible for the Hot Springs fiasco and attempted to contact us in at least one way (we're yet to see if he will also contact us via other means)
Possible reasons he's upset with us, and what he might want
It's pretty clear Jiraiya's upset, but knowing exactly why is important. Here's some different reasons. Most likely, it's a combination of all these. The subpoints are actions he'd likely take if that's a reason he's upset with us
- We broke the DMZ and heightened political tensions worldwide, making war more likely
- Turn us in to prevent a wild goose chase leading to the next World War
- Use us to track down our employer, preventing future international incidents
- Do a lot of political scrambling to stop everyone from killing each other
- We killed a couple ninjas
- Justice? I'm unclear on how ninja society deals with ninja killings, probably not a huge jail population
- Make us do their jobs if they were his?
- We stopped a message (we don't know what the message was)
- Attempt to get the message from us
- Possibly make us deliver the message
- We didn't tell him before or while doing a high impact mission
- Emphasize we need to tell him things?
- Emphasize we need to not take missions
- Kill us
- Trust us
- We accepted a mission from an unknown source
- Emphasize we need to not take missions from unknown sources
- We are acting as loose canons (again)
- Make us not loose cannons
- Keep us closer (use us more)
- Kill us
Actions:
From Jiraiya's perspective, I can see two main avenues of interacting with our team: 1. Killing us and turning us in. 2. Putting us on a short leash and using us for dangerous missions. Here's what I see as his pros and cons to each
Killing us
Pros:
- Stops us from messing up the world or his plans again
- Gains some international recognition by bringing in the DMZ violators
- Cools international tensions by ending the wild goose chase
Cons:
- Loses an unreliable but competent asset
- Possible negative repercussions with Pangolins (likely mitigated by giving the scroll to someone else)
Leashing us
Pros:
- A competent denyable asset
- Possible benefit on VHitM interactions
Cons:
- Risks us running wild again
- Ties up some of his reliable assets (depending on method of leash)
Conclusions
From this, if I were him, I'd try to talk to us in a place where he could kill us to make sure we did what he thinks we did, and gain all the usable information from us that he can. Then, at the end of the interaction, I'd decide either to leash us, or kill us. Right now, the evidence seems to favor killing us. The primary thing we need to do in our chat with Jiraiya is convince him the pros in keeping us around are high and the cons of killing us great. To me, this means (in order of importance):
- Demonstrating (somehow) that we are loyal to him
- Emphasizing the diplomatic in with VHitM (which we use to help him)
- Helping resolve the issue we caused (specifics dependant on what the biggest issues for Jiraiya are that we caused)
