Chapter 702: The Final Lesson
"Walk with me, nephew." The Snake Sannin turned and walked away towards the trees.
Hazō hesitated. Hazō was still here only so that he and his clones could bury the last of the Ninja-Radar Runes. Orochimaru was here making preparations for the first of the many 'kicks' necessary to send the rift back to Leaf. Everyone else, notably including Tsunade, was three miles away, preparing to race at full speed back towards Leaf.
Orochimaru seemed to notice that Hazō was not at his side. He paused and looked back over his shoulder to see Hazō standing, indecisive. One fine eyebrow rose.
Hazō sighed and hurried to follow Orochimaru into the woods.
The older man led the younger out of sight into the trees and then up the trunk of one of the largest forest giants. He climbed higher and higher, Hazō at his side, until they had climbed above the canopy. Orochimaru settled down on a branch as wide as a bench, looking out into the distance. Hazō settled next to him, carefully choosing his distance. Orochimaru didn't seem angry, didn't seem... Hazō couldn't tell what Orochimaru seemed. Maybe...maybe pensive? That made no sense.
Hazō waited silently, eyes locked continually on the Snake Sannin.
"Do you have copies of your research notes, nephew?" Orochimaru asked, his voice distant.
"Not with me," Hazō said after a moment.
"Mm."
The silence hung.
"I note that I had copies of mine ready when you asked."
"I'll get on it."
"Mm."
They sat, looking into the distance across the rolling green of the forest below. Well, Orochimaru looked into the distance. Hazō glanced at it occasionally while watching Orochimaru.
At least three minutes dragged by before Orochimaru spoke again. Three incredibly uncomfortable minutes, at least for Hazō. Orochimaru seemed completely unaware of the awkwardness.
"Do you know why I call you 'nephew'?"
"Because of Jiraiya, I presume."
"Indeed."
More silence.
"There are strata of humans, Hazō. Some are simply better than others."
Silence.
"On a given axis, true," Hazō said carefully. "Some can lift more, some can run faster, some can draw more accurately. I'm not sure what it would mean to say that some are better as a general statement."
"A very political statement from the former Clan Head. Very savvy. Unobjectionable, hints at wisdom. Shows a certain common touch that should endear you to the average ninja."
"Thank you." No way was he rising to that bait. Still, there had been no real bite in the words.
"It was not a compliment. I am not referring to strength or speed, nephew. Yes, those things vary across populations, but they are not what I meant.
"Some people are better than others. On any specific metric there will be a range and someone must be at the top of that range. One metric is how many metrics one excels at, and in this too there must be someone at the top of the range.
"I am at the top of that range. Tsunade is at the top of that range. Jiraiya was at the top of that range. We were the shining lights of our generation."
"That's true," Hazō said after a bit.
"I invented the chakra rice that feeds most of Fire. I presume you recall this."
"I do."
"Greater yield, faster maturation, higher resistance to disease. The ability to grow even in poor soils, and when it dies it decomposes quickly and enriches the soil for the next crop." He gave something that wedged itself halfway between derisive snort and sardonic chuckle, and what it expressed Hazō had no idea.
"I even made it generationally stable. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make changes to an entity and make those changes so complete that they will be passed on to the descendants?" He looked to Hazō, a strange intensity in his eyes.
"I do not, sir."
"Of course you don't." He turned away, looking once more to the horizon.
Silence hung in the air again.
"Biosealing is a very rare art. It requires extensive knowledge of sealing and of medicine and of medical jutsu. A thorough grounding in jutsu creation is also of great benefit."
He fell silent again.
"Rare indeed," Hazō said after a minute. "I think I know of...three biosealers? The two Arikadas and you." Kabuto might or might not be a biosealer; Hazō wasn't sure.
Orochimaru snorted. "Those idiots. Come now, nephew. Do you hear me insulting you by saying 'ah, yes, I know of two sealmasters—you and that illiterate boy down the street scribbling pictures in the dirt with a broken stick'?"
Hazō felt certain that the question was rhetorical.
"I did so much during my time in Leaf." The words were almost a whisper. "It feels strange to think back on it."
"How so, sir?" Hazō asked at last.
"People change over time. Trite, I know, but it is strange to look back on the version of yourself that lived thirty or even forty years ago. It is like looking across a chasm at an entirely different person with entirely different goals and desires, yet knowing that the person is actually yourself. Can you imagine how that feels, boy?"
Hazō considered that. "I don't think so, sir."
"You will. Well, if you were to live long enough.
"That version of myself wanted to serve the Leaf. I wanted to raise it up and ensure that its light shone upon all the world. I spent my time thinking about how to prevent plagues and cure those who caught them. How to repair broken bodies so they could return to the field. How to invent jutsu that would allow our ninja to conquer any foe. How to sing better than anyone else and what beer was available at the Soggy Tag that night."
Once more, Orochimaru's attention wandered off into the mists of time. Once more, Hazō waited silently.
"Hanzō was the only besmirchment on our record, you know. Oh, there were a few failures here and there, plans that fell apart or bonus opportunities unseized. Still, we never failed an objective. Never. More missions than I can remember, all of them successful. Everyone we were told to assassinate, dead. Everything we were told to steal, stolen. Everything we were told to do, done.
"We had peers, had rivals, in the beginning. We surpassed them. Eventually, we were so powerful that we were rarely sent on missions. We were too valuable at home, our mere presence rendering the village safer.
"That was why Jiraiya became Leaf's spymaster. It was the only way he could get out of the village. In addition, we had so many close calls based on faulty intelligence and he wanted to spare the next generation that."
He glanced at Hazō for a moment. "The three of us could have ushered in a golden age, you know. We talked about it at length. Tsunade would have been Hokage after Sensei retired the second time. Jiraiya would have been her spymaster and diplomat. I would have been their weapons-maker and assassin."
He shook his head, still not looking at Hazō. "So much accomplished. Jiraiya transformed Leaf's intelligence network, saved so many lives by ensuring that no one was sent out based on flawed information. Tsunade trained generations of medics. I advanced human knowledge and supported both of the other two."
"You made an enormous difference," Hazō said at last.
"We did. And the research I was doing would have made even more, had Sensei not taken such offense. Had the others backed me, helped me talk him down." His fist tightened. "Larger chakra reserves. Faster reaction times. Rapid and more complete healing. Denser bones and muscles meaning you hit harder and can absorb more damage. At the time I was beginning to work on brain structures. Enhanced memory for faster learning would have been the least of the things I could have given the next generation."
Silence.
He turned to look at Hazō. "You and your team could have been the next Sannin, you know. Not duplicates, no. Some similarities, but not direct duplicates. All three summoners, of course. Noburi, a rising medical star. Kei, a skilled leader and a ranged weapons user with some degree of promise. Yourself."
Silence.
"Me?"
"You are the only person in your generation that I recognize as a visionary."
Hazō stared.
"You have the potential to transform the world, nephew." He tossed one hand. "I suppose you have, actually. Skywalkers were your idea, correct?"
"Yes, although Kagome-sensei created them."
"Yes, well, he could not have accomplished it without your initial concept. Are you aware of the downstream events caused by your little idea?"
"I am, yes."
"Operation Needle Point, leading to the death of my teacher. Oh, and to the death of three jinchūriki, my brother in arms, most of the Kage, and a significant plurality of the jōnin from several nations and almost none from others. In essence, unsettling the geopolitics of the entire known world and causing the deaths of nearly everyone that I still cared about."
Hazō struggled not to audibly swallow.
"But."
Silence.
"But?" Hazō asked.
"But, you have done so much good as well." He leaned back on his hands, still staring into the distance, his voice thoughtful and musing. "The rift appearing was a stroke of fortune, but you have spent years pursuing it with dogged persistence. More persistence than most of those in your generation."
"Thank you?"
"And then there are the runes. An entirely new paradigm of chakra manipulation. Do you recognize what that means, nephew?"
Hazō had no idea what to say to that.
"Chakra is a fascinating thing," Orochimaru mused. "It has some capacity for ideation, as seen when casting a jutsu—you don't specify the precise pattern in which the elements of a Stone Storm Barrier orbit you, the jutsu deals with that. It also has holes that can be exploited. Seals do that—break the rules, exploit gaps and weaknesses in the laws of reality. Medical jutsu are yet a third thing. Human bodies have a self-concept, a view of how they wish to be. Medical jutsu are about strengthening that concept and providing the energy necessary for the body to bring itself back in accord with that self-concept."
His lips quirked into a tiny smile, almost more of a smirk. "Oh, certainly, Tsunade will describe it differently, as will that child of hers..." He frowned, snapping his fingers to bring back the name. "The girl with the flat nose. K-something... Kon Ai, that was it. I seem to recall she disagreed with Tsunade on some points. They will all spin for you their various conceptions of how medical jutsu work, what it's like to heal someone." He tossed his hand. "They'll be wrong, but they will.
"Jutsu, seals, medical techniques. The three pillars of chakra manipulation. The only known such methods for all of human history. Three fundamental, irreducible pillars of chakra manipulation for all of history. And now, a fourth: runecrafting."
"It's...it's really just seal theory scaled up into three—"
"Do shut up, nephew."
Hazō closed his mouth with a click.
Orochimaru flicked a glance at him, then looked away with an eyeroll. "This is your foundational weakness of character, boy. Humility. You will never become the next Orochimaru, or Jiraiya, or Tsunade, with humility."
"I don't intend to be the next Orochimaru or Jiraiya or Tsunade."
Orochimaru looked at Hazō, surprised.
"I am not going to be the next anything. I am going to be the first Hazō."
Orochimaru chuckled in honest amusement. "Better. Continue in that vein and perhaps there would be hope. Do you wish to be remembered as the first of anything? In that case, avoid modesty, humility, and relatability. The Sannin exhibited none of those traits. We dominated the world with hubris and the ability to back it up. You wish to change the way things are? Prove that you have the power to crush your enemies and make sure they know it."
Hazō chewed on that one. "I don't have the power yet. Personal power, I mean. I can blow up their entire estate and everyone they care about from a mile away, but I can't punch the head off someone who annoys me. That seems like the only thing that ninja society respects."
"You exhaust me, boy. Power does not rain down from the heavens. Power is something that you
take, that you grasp with both hands and tear from the foundations of the world. Power is something that you earn with pain and sweat and murder. My team? We carved a trail of blood across the world. Any nation whose relations with Leaf deteriorated, we saw that as an opportunity. We chose a clan from that nation, a clan that had some interesting jutsu or seal or bit of knowledge. We chose them and then we murdered as many of them as necessary to make their power our own. We roamed through forgotten corners of the world, locating rare animals and plants, acquiring every scrap of knowledge we could find that was not widely known. From what you have shown me thus far, you lack the resolve to tread our path.
"Your skill with seals is respectable. Your ability with runes..." He fell silent, grimacing, then sighed and continued. "Your ability with runes is actually impressive. You founded an entirely new field of chakra manipulation and you have created a few actually useful things with it. Generations flow like rivers between such events."
"...Thank you?"
"I find it tremendously frustrating."
"Why?"
Silence once more draped itself over them as Orochimaru fell back into his own musings.
"Do you know," he said at last, "why history shows that tremendous new techniques and seals are made only by powerful ninja? Why Namikaze Minato did not create his version of the Flying Thunder God technique as a chūnin?"
"Because such things require more skill than a chūnin has?"
"No. Because whenever a weak ninja invents something useful, a powerful ninja will take it from them and be remembered as the creator. And now you, barely a chūnin, unable to protect yourself against anything more challenging than a new Academy graduate, you have invented a new paradigm of chakra manipulation."
The hairs on the back of Hazō's neck were standing up.
"Worse, you are simply so...so..." The Snake Sannin shook his head in frustration. "So
stupid. So naïve. A brilliant researcher with not the slightest trace of wisdom. What is the first thing you do? You notify every sealmaster in Leaf that this new paradigm exists. You make available a model of the Great Seal. You provide every scrap of knowledge you have that might allow the village plodders to master the art. You even
taught it to the Snake Sannin."
"Umm..."
"Honestly, boy. How can you possibly be so talented and yet such an idiot? I am the bogeyman of Leaf. Of large parts of the Elemental Nations, actually. My reputation is for murder, torture, utter lack of concern for the humanity of others. I earned that reputation in every particular and it bothers me not in the slightest. Indeed, I find it extremely useful. Did anything about our initial encounters give you the impression that I was a friendly, approachable person? That I was some misunderstood yet heroic figure who needed only to be extended the hand of trust and friendship in order to be redeemed?"
"Uh..."
"Were you Jiraiya, I would be far less annoyed right now. I can imagine Jiraiya developing the art of runecrafting. Do you know what I cannot imagine him doing?"
"...Sharing it?"
"Yes!" He slapped the branch they were sitting on. "Jiraiya would have invented the art, developed his runes, and kept its very existence secret even as he used them to conquer the world. He would have protected Leaf, cast down its enemies, compelled other nations to lay down their arms in fear of destruction, all without ever letting word leak out as to how his power worked. I would never have needed to fear that the art would be taken from him, or that he would share it with anyone unworthy. I would have found it extremely frustrating to find some means of persuading him to share it with
me, but that would have been acceptable.
"You? You invent this enormous secret that you lack the power to keep from the hands of anyone wishing to take it. You cannot possibly be such an idiot that you do not recognize this, yet still you shout your secret from the rooftops, actively push it into the hands of anyone who wanders past. Indeed, I am astounded that you did not chase other ninja across the roofs of Leaf in order to force instruction manuals into their hands."
"I didn't want to share it," Hazō said defensively. "I had to. The Dragons were killing. They were a threat to the entire Seventh Path, and perhaps to the Human Path as well. I wasn't sure I could learn runecrafting fast enough to solve the problem alone, but failure wasn't acceptable. I needed help." He hesitated, then decided that perhaps this was a moment for honesty. "And I expected you to figure it out for yourself soon. Offering it to you let me get something in exchange."
"I suppose I can respect the mercenary nature." He waved dismissively. "As to the rest of it... There is your humility again. Abandon it, nephew. If you wish to ever matter in the world, carve the sin of humility from your soul. Never entertain the possibility of failure, and for the love of all things, stop shouting the secrets of your power to the world."
Hazō had no idea what to say to that.
"I have never desired an apprentice. I intend not to die, thus why should I care what comes after my death? Also, those who politely ask for wisdom are demonstrating that there is no point in giving it to them. Still, under the circumstances I suppose I might as well offer a pair of tidbits. Do you wish to become powerful?"
"Yes sir." He shifted slightly on the branch, moving closer to the edge so that he could drop quickly if needed.
"First, do things in the proper order. Become powerful enough to defend your world-altering inventions, and only
then do you invent them.
"Second, always grasp for power but do not be foolish about it. If your chakra reserves are too small for your needs, expand them through hard work. Or convince the Toad Sages to teach you their arts of nature-chakra manipulation. Or locate one of the few surviving members of the Yabusaki clan. Or acquire a steady supply of bloodwood fruit."
He turned and looked at Hazō, facing him fully for the first time since they settled in the treetops. Hazō looked back, uncertain of what was happening.
"Or study biosealing," Orochimaru said at last. "Learn how to remove the chakra coils from a more powerful ninja and install them into yourself. Understand the implications and the risks."
He went silent again, slit-pupiled eyes scanning Hazō's face as though searching for something. Hazō knew not what.
"Moreover," Orochimaru said at last, "if there is someone else in the world who will be advantaged by your removal as a rival, do not gormlessly allow them to operate on you."
Hazō started to move, but he was too slow. Orochimaru snapped his fingers and Hazō's entire chakra system, native and transplanted, exploded. He plummeted off the branch, clutching his chest in agony.
The agony lasted but a moment; Gōketsu Hazō was dead before he hit the ground.
Author's Note: As Douglas Adams would say: don't panic. Keep reading the rest of this A/N and things will get better. This is not quest over. This author's note gives a bunch of necessary context and then we're looking for player input on what to do next.
Yes, Hazō is dead. Yes, Orochimaru planted a kill switch in him when he implanted the extra chakra coil that gave Hazō the strength to summon Cannai for the Zoo Rush against Akatsuki. You have options on where things go from here, and we'll cover them farther down.
We believe this is the simulationist outcome, for reasons we will describe in detail below. We don't want this to be quest end and we don't want to make everything anti-fun. Therefore, we are soliciting suggestions on where to go next.
One option is to break simulation, roll back this chapter, then make some change by QM fiat that lets Hazō live, based on our discussion with the players. See below for more.
Before we get into details, let's look at how we got here and set the context. We can start with the Doylist stuff and try to head off the objections we expect to see:
- Q: Should the blame for Hazō's death be completely on the QMs, or completely on the players?
- A: Neither. Everything that happens in Marked for Death is a mutual thing, arising organically from the best intentions and efforts of both players and QMs. That's why we're reaching out now in an attempt to collaborate towards the best continuation we can.
- Q: It feels like we-the-players were forced into this. Did we have any option other than accepting the bioseal?
- A: Yes, we think so. The situation was extremely challenging and none of your options were risk-free. Still, some things you could have tried:
- Go without the bioseal and take the chance on being spotted. It wasn't a necessarily-fatal risk—you didn't know that Hidan was present and didn't know if his senses were always-on or required explicit activation.
- Use going without the bioseal as an intentional strategy to lure enemies to prepared ground outside the fortress.
- Capture Kotsuzui ninja to experiment with, to design counters to their blood-sensing ability.
- Lure Hidan somewhere and kill him before the battle ever happened. This could have been as part of the plan in chapter 700 or even sometime back during the research arc. You could even have sent the rest of the team to do it while Hazō researched.
- Win Jashin's favor through whatever means, bargain for protection from Hidan. Note that Hazō has reason to think that Jashin's favor can be bought with coin other than mass murder, as shown by his success at Bakuchioka.
- We're not saying that taking the bioseal was a mistake, given the information the players had available. It was simply one of several risky options, any of which had the possibility of leading to a bad outcome. This particular choice increased the risk from Orochimaru while reducing the risk from other sources.
- Q: Should the QMs have rolled for the combat with Orochimaru instead of making it a finger-snap autowin for the Sannin? Remember, the Iron Nerve gives us one free reroll against lethal hits.
- A: The specific details of the encounter are immaterial. Once the killswitch had been implanted, even interacting with the world exclusively through shadow clones would only have delayed the inevitable until the killswitch popped, or Hazō's next bioseal upkeep appointment, or equivalent. That's not something that dodging a tiny bit faster is going to solve, so the reroll wasn't relevant. We thought it better not to prolong the situation and instead face it head-on.
Moving on...
In the interest of collaboration, we're going to provide more OOC information than we normally would: The main thing that Orochimaru wants is to live as long as he wants and be able to do whatever he wants (mainly research). In order to get that, he needs to:
- Prevent Akatsuki from resurrecting Pain, assuming they haven't already.
- If Pain has been resurrected, then Orochimaru feels that he's already lost, so he's not focusing on that one.
- Assuming he hasn't been resurrected, then Orochimaru feels he has the issue covered now that he has secured the rift.
- Stop the spread of runecrafting.
- First, it's incredibly powerful. Orochimaru wants that power for himself. He doesn't want other people to use it to build weapons that could potentially kill him.
- Second, it's incredibly dangerous. A runic failure could be catastrophic for reality.
- Fix the Great Seal to prevent Draconic apocalypse.
- This requires runecrafting and Orochimaru doesn't trust anyone else to do it.
- Implement new immortality measures as necessary and possible.
- This includes both exploiting the rift and as-yet-unspecified runes to keep him safe.
- (Note that defending Leaf isn't on the list.)
So, why does Orochimaru want to kill Hazō? Basically:
- Hazō is a clear vector for spreading runecrafting.
- Hazō has attempted to share knowledge of the Great Seal with others before.
- Hazō is clearly close to his clan, including a sealmaster-summoner in Arachnid.
- Hazō is philosophically all about sharing and mutual benefit.
- Hazō is about to go back to Leaf to make lots of runes. Not only could the Hyūga notice, but Akatsuki will be paying lots of attention to Leaf. If they circumvent the Force Dome (and Orochimaru expects them to be able to) and learn about runecrafting, that could be the end of Orochimaru.
- Hazō is clearly philosophically opposed to Orochimaru.
- If he's left free to power up, he might eventually make an attempt on Orochimaru's life.
- Orochimaru doesn't yet know if runes are offense- or defense-dominant. Potentially, Hazō's rune offense will beat Orochimaru's defenses.
- Exacerbating this, Hazō has a demonstrated way of creatively using seals, so even if Orochimaru thinks that Hazō probably can't break through his defenses, Hazō might do it anyway.
The natural conclusion of this is that Orochimaru should kill Hazō now, before he can power up enough to be a serious rival.
There are some cons to killing Hazō. Unfortunately, they are all mitigated in Oro's point of view:
- Hazō's runes could help with killing Akatsuki.
- Orochimaru acknowledges this. He expects that he's roughly an equally good runemaster as Hazō, and will eventually eclipse him. In time, Orochimaru will be able to duplicate Hazō's runes.
- There would be value in having Hazō produce runes to help kill Akatsuki sooner, so Orochimaru is losing value by killing Hazō now. On the other hand, Hazō shows no signs of wanting to kill Akatsuki proactively, preferring instead to turtle up in Leaf under a Force Dome.
- Hazō could help fix the Great Seal.
- See above: Orochimaru expects to eclipse Hazō as a runemaster. In the long run, Orochimaru thinks that he will either be able to solve the problem himself, or the problem will be unsolvable.
- In general, keeping Hazō as a research pet would be useful.
- Unfortunately, it isn't really an alternative. It's hard to compel research out of someone, especially when they could cause a runic failure at any point out of spite. The constant watch for betrayal would be unfeasible.
- Without runes, Leaf will be much more poorly defended.
- Orochimaru just doesn't care about Leaf that much.
- Orochimaru doesn't expect Hazō's runes to completely defend Leaf. Among other things, he expects Samehada to present a respectable counter to Force Domes.
- If Hazō doesn't go back to Leaf, Leaf might instead choose a "smarter" strategy like scattering to the four winds, which might let more of them survive.
- Killing Hazō would burn Orochimaru's relationship with Leaf.
- See above about Leaf being not that important in his eyes, as well as potentially doomed.
- Aligned with Leaf, he has Noburi-access and loads of ninja to drain, which greatly accelerates his rune research. However, staying in Leaf to exploit this would come with some costs:
- He would need to obey the law and the Hokage's orders sometimes.
- He would be in the place where Akatsuki are about to be focusing all their attention, and being located is the first step to being killed.
- Orochimaru plans to live for a long time. Leaf forgave him his first stint of kidnapping and murdering Leaf ninja, so probably one more won't be a big deal if he comes back a decade later with enough value in hand.
- Killing Hazō would sour Orochimaru's relationship with Tsunade.
- See above about Orochimaru having time to let her get over it. Also, he doesn't think she's that attached to Hazō.
- Hazō has given Orochimaru a bunch of interesting shinies before. Killing Hazō would kill the source of shinies.
- This is true. Unfortunately, those shinies also power up Hazō. See above about Hazō eventually becoming a threat to Oro's immortality.
Basically, killing Hazō directly serves Orochimaru's goals, and none of the reasons for not killing him are immediate dealbreakers. On the other hand, the fact that Hazō is about to return to Leaf and make a bunch of runes is a compelling reason to kill him immediately. So, Orochimaru took action.
(We could have kicked the can down the road and said that Orochimaru kills Hazō in Leaf, or at their next bioseal upkeep session, or... We ultimately decided that, not only was immediate action a better choice for Orochimaru, but this would "rip the bandaid off" more quickly and help us shift over to a better timeline.)
For what it's worth, our model of Orochimaru for the past ~year has been playing more friendly/attached to Hazō than he actually feels. Hazō didn't notice because of the social gap, though we tried to signpost it occasionally in other ways. Orochimaru does see parts of himself reflected in Hazō, but he mainly wanted to make Hazō trust him more (which could secure future shinies or rune notes, in addition to an opportunity to kill Hazō). A year ago, Orochimaru hadn't resolved to kill Hazō, but when Hazō presented himself for a bioseal two weeks ago, Orochimaru saw the opportunity, evaluated it, and took it (and yes, there weren't issues with too many bioseals at once. This is Orochimaru—if he wants to add a kill-switch, he'll find a way).
Our QM call yesterday and the additional one we did today were extra-long because we went through
the plan that got voted in, figured out how we were going to handle all the pieces of it, talked about how Tsunade would get y'all into Leaf secretly, talked about what Naruto would say in response to your questions, and so on. When we were done we did our usual "okay, what are various characters doing in the background of this plan" bit...at which point we realized that this was when Orochimaru was going to pull his sudden but inevitable betrayal and kill Hazō. That led to all of the analysis that you just now finished reading.
We then spent quite some time looking for ways to make this work so we didn't have to end the quest. We wanted to stick with our commitment to simulationism, but we also didn't want the quest to end and didn't want to drop a no-fun bomb on everything. Some options we considered, formatted into an approximation of a hopefully amusing pseudo-dialogue:
Maybe Orochimaru can't run for it because Tsunade is going to be riding herd on him all the way back?
No, she is going to want to get back to Leaf ASAP in case Akatsuki attacks, so she will be running ahead while he follows with the rift.
Maybe she decides that guarding him and the rift is more beneficial to Leaf than her being there a bit sooner, so she sticks with him all the way back and he can't manage to get away while she's watching?
No, he can definitely give her the slip if he wants to. He's got Shadow Clone, Substitution, skywalkers, reverse summoning, and a host of S-rank evasion techniques sufficient to keep him hidden for his entire time as a missing-nin. He can pretend to kick the rift in one direction but actually send it in another, then have a Shadow Clone continue on with her to the claimed location while Prime hustles off to the actual destination.
(We looked at various ways that maybe Tsunade could prevent Orochimaru from escaping but couldn't find a convincingly plausible way that she could keep him reined in during a multiple-week mosey back to Leaf.)
[many options are discussed and shot down]
Hm. The players only a bit ago put together a massive coordinated effort to point out problems in the quest, one of which was a lack of transparency, communication, and 'working-together'ness. Maybe we should actually listen and learn?
Hey, good plan! Let's write the update that we think would actually happen so that the players can get the emotional impact of it, then ask their input on what to do next.
And here we are. As we said above, we're looking for suggestions on what to do from here.
Yes, this will be done via voting but please do not post plans yet.
Let's discuss for at least a day and we'll open voting later. Everything is on the table, so please don't constrain yourself. We are open to continuing the quest with Hazō in the afterlife, but we do expect that version of the quest would be unwinnable—Orochimaru has essentially uncontested control over the rift, and would be able to keep it closed except when he needs it open, even if a chakra-drained Hazō and whatever rift allies he acquired were capable of finding the rift and overpowering Orochimaru to escape.
We very much do not want to bias discussion but we would like to make clear the size of the possibility space, so we'll say that we're at least open to breaking simulation, rolling back time, and then...
- Orochimaru doesn't install the killswitch for some reason, or...
- The killswitch misfires and Hazō survives for some reason, or...
- Someone saves Hazō in the nick of time.
In all these situations, we would appreciate your help figuring out the details of how and why it happened.
Discussion time! What to do now?
