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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Cariyaga said:
I'm... not actually convinced it is? Naively, sure... but Leaf + Hazou means that we cede the rift to Leaf which means them using it for war. I'm not actually sure whether it's better that Leaf be using it for war than Oro be using it for Oro-level experimentation.
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Oro is seriously bad news.
He's a researcher who just gets stronger over time. He was one of the strongest ninja in the world before we handed him dragon-biosealing augmentations and Runesmithing.
When we asked him if it was possible for him to coexist with the existence of other agents long-term, he laughed and called us an idiot.
He is necessarily one of the final bosses of MfD.

If we hand him the rift, he might decide to fish out Essies and mind control them with biosealing, basically inventing Edo Tensi.

If Leaf has the rift, it will fight a bloody war, then spread uplift, and eventually become the kind of power that can permakill or restrain Orochimaru.
Not *ideal*, but much better than helping Orochimaru ascend to ultimate power.
 
redzonejoe said:
I trust that Orochimaru isn't going to backstab his own side and arrogantly believe that he can take on Akatsuki by himself and that being on the run from the united strength of the rest of the world is somehow better than just.. staying with a revived and empowered leaf that is willing to let him keep doing what he wants.
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"A revived and empowered Leaf" isn't going to let him keep doing what he wants. Naruto and Asuma were already salivating at any prospect of making it unnecessary to tolerate him. He doubtlessly knows this.
 
I don't think we really have a choice here. Other than maybe getting word to Leaf now-ish. But I'm not sure that will turn out well for us.

It's kind of defecting against Orochimaru very directly and in a way that's obvious to him and leaves us in his power to deal with.
 
I much prefer working with Snuncle than with Naruto. Oro is going to let us rez Jiraiya and Akane and won't also rez a ton of new Essies who will force us to the bottom of the pecking order. Plus if he does start going mad with power we will have Jiraiya who will have access to minato sealing and runes to keep him in check
 
Noumero said:
"A revived and empowered Leaf" isn't going to let him keep doing what he wants. Naruto and Asuma were already salivating at any prospect of making it unnecessary to tolerate him. He doubtlessly knows this.
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Disagree for a number of reasons. I don't want to write an essay plus I'd already be largely repeating myself, so here's a few bullet points
  • Orochimaru is a runemaster wielding an unknown number of WMDs (the default state of all runemasters, honestly)
  • Orochimaru helped save the world during DRAGONWAR
  • Orochimaru is about to help save the world with Riftwar
  • Orochimaru wants to remain in leaf instead of being missing
  • Leaf wants Orochimaru to keep being an asset instead of an enemy
    • Especially an Orochimaru with the destructive powers of runes sitting in his basement right there in leaf village. Even an empowered leaf is going to be wary about crossing him, and would vastly prefer to keep him placated.

The other points are flavor, really, but the underlined is the core of the situation. Leaf needs Oro, and he prefers leaf. There might be a day in the future where leaf doesn't need Oro, and yes I'm sure he knows this; but even if they don't need him, he can ensure they are never in a position where they can afford to make an enemy of him. No matter how strong leaf gets, it'll be better to accommodate him instead of making him an enemy.

The only timeline where Leaf stops playing nice with Orochimaru is the one where they decide to risk an assassination attempt... against the guy dedicated to surviving at any cost. If they fuck it up, he can then wipe them off the map in retaliation. I don't see them making this choice.

They might attempt to place more limits, more restrictions on his research, but never to the point of alienating him because, well... yeah. Why would they.
 
Yeah honestly I don't think Naruto understands how big of a change Runes are to the paradigm, and once we explain that to him, he'll do whatever it takes to get Oro on side.
 
Really, Oro is just a lost puppy. Went and got himself missing again. Don't worry though, we'll be here to bring you back home!
 
redzonejoe said:
Disagree for a number of reasons. I don't want to write an essay plus I'd already be largely repeating myself, so here's a few bullet points
  • Orochimaru is a runemaster wielding an unknown number of WMDs (the default state of all runemasters, honestly)
  • Orochimaru helped save the world during DRAGONWAR
  • Orochimaru is about to help save the world with Riftwar
  • Orochimaru wants to remain in leaf instead of being missing
  • Leaf wants Orochimaru to keep being an assetinstead of an enemy
    • Especially an Orochimaru with the destructive powers of runes sitting in his basement right there in leaf village. Even an empowered leaf is going to be wary about crossing him, and would vastly prefer to keep him placated.

The other points are flavor, really, but the underlined is the core of the situation. Leaf needs Oro, and he prefers leaf. There might be a day in the future where leaf doesn't need Oro, and yes I'm sure he knows this; but even if they don't need him, he can ensure they are never in a position where they can afford to make an enemy of him. No matter how strong leaf gets, it'll be better to accommodate him instead of making him an enemy.

The only timeline where Leaf stops playing nice with Orochimaru is the one where they decide to risk an assassination attempt... against the guy dedicated to surviving at any cost. If they fuck it up, he can then wipe them off the map in retaliation. I don't see them making this choice.

They might attempt to place more limits, more restrictions on his research, but never to the point of alienating him because, well... yeah. Why would they.
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I'm not fully convinced, but those are good points.
 
redzonejoe said:
how did your quote delete the space between the words 'asset' and 'instead'?

Sorry, kinda random but it jumped out at me.
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SV's editor does this all the time. If part of a sentence is italicized or (apparently) underlined, quoting or copying the message will sometimes delete the space after that part.

I assume the conditions for it to happen have something to do with how the underlying bb-code tags are placed, like maybe if it says "{i}two {/i}words", it will eat the space, but not if it's "{i}two{/i} words". (It's not that simple, though; this obvious hypothesis I'd disproven a while ago. I've never been able to elicit this bug consistently, though I didn't try very hard.)

Edit: Oh, it appears to have something to do with whether the bullet-point containing the italicized text contains a sub-bullet? Check this out:
  • one two three four
  • one two three four
    • five six seven
    • five six seven
    • five six seven
      • eight nine ten
    • five six seven
  • one two three four
If you copy or quote that, the space after "one two" in the second bullet-point will be eaten, but not in the first or the third one. Similarly for the sub-bullets. Edit 2: Oh, and also the spaces will be eaten for me if I decide to edit the post, except they'll spontaneously stop being eaten (including when being quoted) if I fix them several times.

What mysterious behavior.
 
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FWIW Oro's unethical biosealing horror show is probably also more palatable to a Leaf that can just recover whoever is sent there from the Rift...🗿

3rd Hokage was justifiably freaking out that Oro was just disappearing Leaf's own ninja to study them but with an actual system in place that also doesn't result in permadeath, well, I can easily see the Tower shrugging and saying carry on
 
Sir Stompy said:
I'm inclined to go to Oro first and see what he's saying. I think it very likely that he's got Naruto and Sunny with him right now. And trying to contact them and wait to hear back is a pointless waste of time when every second matters.
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What's the backup plan if we show up and discover Naruto and Sunny aren't there, and Orochimaru is operating solo?

And why would Naruto and Tsunade be hanging out in Rice? It's in the opposite direction as O'zou is from Leaf, and an extended Kage absence is notable and suspicious, and leaves Leaf extremely vulnerable.

If we go to Fire country to check in with Naruto, but learn he&Sunny are out, we can easily link up with them/Oro on their way to the rift site, as we'd already be between Rice and the rift site.
 
Shrooms said:
FWIW Oro's unethical biosealing horror show is probably also more palatable to a Leaf that can just recover whoever is sent there from the Rift...🗿

3rd Hokage was justifiably freaking out that Oro was just disappearing Leaf's own ninja to study them but with an actual system in place that also doesn't result in permadeath, well, I can easily see the Tower shrugging and saying carry on
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Not sure about this. The problem is, this results in a gradual accumulation of living, active ninja in Leaf who Orochimaru tortured. At some point, this is likely to result in enough political pressure to get the Tower to do something about him. Also, bear in mind that we're not exactly going to tolerate Orochimaru torturing people longer than we have to, and we'd presumably end up in a position of power after helping grant Leaf the power to resurrect people. So I'm not sure this nullifies the argument that Oro doesn't want Leaf's old S-rankers back because they could reign him in.

Regarding what we do, I think there are basically five scenarios, Oro-wise.
  • Oro either has already linked up with Leaf or intends to link up with Leaf.
    • This is basically just our original plan. We definitely want to link up with him in this case.
  • Oro doesn't plan to link up with Leaf before the assault, but plans to return afterwards and is genuine about wanting our help.
    • I think we link up with Oro in this case too. If we link up with Oro, we can hopefully do RER bombardment (I find it likely that Oro has not thought of REs as a weapon type, for the same reason he never thought of skywalkers) and we'll have Noburi-fueled Oro SCs to back us up if things go wrong. I think we have a pretty good chance of success, at least as long as we can get the initial bombardment off, especially considering whatever runes Orochimaru might have cooked up on his own for this kind of scenario.
  • Oro doesn't plan to link up with Leaf before the assault and is planning to stay missing with us afterwards.
    • This is basically the Yoink plan, but with Oro. It's not ideal, but in this scenario (which presumes Oro is willing to cooperate) I think we'd still want to link up with him.
  • Oro doesn't plan to link up with Leaf and plans to abscond with the Rift afterwards, possibly killing us as well to eliminate runecrafting competition.
    • This is the most likely "bad" scenario, I think. Whether or not Oro kills us afterwards, we probably can't stop him if he decides to take the Rift himself. At that point, we probably can't go back to Leaf, so we're stuck being missing-nin until we can solve all our problems with runecrafting/FOOM and become S-rank - the correct action here is probably "run off over the ocean till we find another landmass, use runecrafting to set up a fortified base, then lighthouse for a few years till we're all S-rankers and come back".
    • That said, we'd have to do that if Akatsuki brings back Pain too. So this scenario is only really that bad if Oro kills us after the assault, and we can probably find ways to disincentivise that - runecrafting caches and so on.
  • Oro intends to backstab us immediately.
    • Obviously in this case it would be best to ignore Oro's offer; but I think this scenario is pretty unlikely. We would be very helpful for a rift assault, and Oro knows it; unless he's already beaten Akatsuki by himself (which seems unlikely even with runecrafting) it would be unbelievably short-sighted of him to kill us before the assault instead of afterwards. Oro has been willing to deal fairly with us in the past; I think he's probably playing it straight with this message, at least until after we have the Rift.
All in all, I think linking up with Oro is the correct move whatever happens. Optionally, we could try to talk to Naruto first, which would help deter Oro from absconding with the Rift; but then if Leaf is under surveillance or otherwise unsafe to approach, we'd risk blowing the whole thing open. I think it's better to just go to Rice, meet with Oro, and either let him explain why Leaf isn't safe to get help from or get help from Leaf on our way. He could lie, of course; but we'd have a chance to think about what he said and decide if we thought it was likely.
 
Left-Hand Mutant said:
What's the backup plan if we show up and discover Naruto and Sunny aren't there, and Orochimaru is operating solo?
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Figure out why, make a case for involving Leaf, see what he says, and make a decision then. We are preparing a dead man's switch and the like for a hostile Oro. Also going as an SC so we can flee if we don't like what he says.
Left-Hand Mutant said:
And why would Naruto and Tsunade be hanging out in Rice? It's in the opposite direction as O'zou is from Leaf, and an extended Kage absence is notable and suspicious, and leaves Leaf extremely vulnerable.
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I was simply pointing out that you want to immediately take irrevocable action when we don't have a good picture of the actors involved. I don't think it's likely Naruto is there, Tsunade might be tho.
Left-Hand Mutant said:
If we go to Fire country to check in with Naruto, but learn he&Sunny are out, we can easily link up with them/Oro on their way to the rift site, as we'd already be between Rice and the rift site
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You act like this is trivial to do. It is not, not in the slightest.

We cannot enter Leaf without sparking the mother of all panics from every single intelligence service, which means we need to be careful, which takes time.

Time we don't have, Oro is going to act without us if we don't get there quickly. We cannot take a week to grab a patsy and infiltrate Leaf, make contact with Naruto and get the DL from him. At best, we split the party and get in touch with a Naruto-clone that way.

I still don't want to do that before making contact with Oro, Oro might be very reasonably pissed off if we blunder and alert Akatsuki at this stage.

I think you're too concerned with Oro betraying us and not enough with our incompetence spoiling the operation.
 
Left-Hand Mutant said:
an extended Kage absence is notable and suspicious, and leaves Leaf extremely vulnerable.
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I want to dissect this a little more. Certainly various values of 'extended' are a big security risk for Leaf, but how long would Naruto realistically have been gone? I doubt weeks, if only because Naruto leaving and Orochimaru having some unspecified falling out with Leaf would be rather conspicuous and stir up an ANBU hornet nest. In that case (Naruto being gone for two weeks or less), what's the actual threat?

Ninja can move fast, but two weeks is tight for Rock or Cloud spies to discover Naruto's absence, report it back to their home village, and then...? Mobilize a sabotage squad for The Collapse part two? I don't think they'd go for a full invasion with AMITY still (seemingly) working as-intended. If Akatsuki were looking for a chance to raze Leaf, they would've done it sooner when a sensitive and vital operation wasn't taking place halfway across the map. A big chakra beast isn't any more likely to show up if Naruto isn't there vs when he is. I'm having trouble picturing what kind of threat is actually present for what seems like a pretty short-term absence of the Hokage.
 
Sir Stompy said:
Also going as an SC so we can flee if we don't like what he says.
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This reads to me like you expect fleeing Orochimaru to be something well within our capabilities. Orochimaru plans for contingencies and is, more or less, fully aware of our capabilities with respect to escape and evasion.

In the world where we arrive, speak with Orochimaru, and then decide that we want to bail and go to Leaf against Orochimaru's wishes, what odds do you give that we can actually pull that off? I give us 20% at best. Mari might be able to escape, but I expect he'd grab at least one of us and that's likely checkmate.
Sir Stompy said:
I was simply pointing out that you want to immediately take irrevocable action when we don't have a good picture of the actors involved. I don't think it's likely Naruto is there, Tsunade might be tho.
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In this vein, I expect approaching Orochimaru to be irrevocable or on-average irrevocable.

I still favour approaching Orochimaru, but I think doing so with clear eyes is important. We're gambling on our values being aligned, and I think there are reasonable odds that he stabs us in the back the moment he's secured the Rift to ensure his exclusive and uninterrupted access for however long he needs to achieve true immortality.
 
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FaintlySorcerous said:
This reads to me like you expect fleeing Orochimaru to be something well within our capabilities. Orochimaru plans for contingencies and is, more or less, fully aware of our capabilities with respect to escape and evasion.
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Having information doesn't actually do anything to change your capabilities. Orochimaru isn't omnipotent and there's not a lot anyone can do in the immediate term about fleeing ninja with a head start, especially Summoners.
 
DanZapman said:
Having information doesn't actually do anything to change your capabilities. Orochimaru isn't omnipotent and there's not a lot anyone can do in the immediate term about fleeing ninja with a head start, especially Summoners.
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He's not omnipotent but he has a lot of esoteric abilities. Nothing stops him from promising the moon and going mask-off once we arrive in the flesh, or revealing his true agenda once the Akatsuki are diminished.
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
This reads to me like you expect fleeing Orochimaru to be something well within our capabilities. Orochimaru plans for contingencies and is, more or less, fully aware of our capabilities with respect to escape and evasion
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Yes I do, if we set up fully camouflaged and miles away? He can't track us on skywalkers and he can't predict where we'll have set up.
FaintlySorcerous said:
In the world where we arrive, speak with Orochimaru, and then decide that we want to bail and go to Leaf against Orochimaru's wishes, what odds do you give that we can actually pull that off? I give us 20% at best. Mari might be able to escape, but I expect he'd grab at least one of us and that's likely checkmate
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I put it 80% chance of getting away. 60% chance of getting away clean.
 
DanZapman said:
Having information doesn't actually do anything to change your capabilities. Orochimaru isn't omnipotent and there's not a lot anyone can do in the immediate term about fleeing ninja with a head start, especially Summoners.
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I don't expect him to be sitting in the exact location he gave us, I'd expect him or a SC observing from a SCSA skytower a mile up. I don't think we can get within our SC range within being spotted, especially given Hazou's stealth. And that's ignoring whatever advanced sensory bullshit Orochimaru has.
 
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