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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Chronic said:
By the way, given that he is almost certainly dead, feel like revealing a bit about his backstory, skillset and jutsu? Those "paper arts" of him interests me. Related to what Konan does?
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It's a funny story, actually. The original Shikigami, back when the quest was at the planning stage, was a willowy, laconic, somewhat ghostlike woman with prodigious abilities when it came to exploding tags, sealing tags and basically all manner of paper-based arts, which earned her the nickname from her fellow ninja (in Japanese folklore, a shikigami is a spirit which sorcerers frequently bind into paper-based familiars). Then, due to a misunderstanding, that profile didn't end up getting used, and the final Shikigami-sensei was the original's opposite in more or less every way.

"Canon" Shikigami's abilities did not include sealing tag use (since we told you there were no sealing masters in the group), but he had great expertise and creativity with exploding tags, and could quickly form chakra-reinforced paper into a very flexible (but strong) variety of impromptu ninja tools. He wasn't a prodigy like Konan (whose canon skills largely involved turning into paper), but as long as he was touching the paper he could make it do more or less what he wanted. It really makes you wonder what he would have been capable of had he not been surrounded by water and limited in his supply of materials (though, conversely, Water Element affinity is a wonderful thing to have in a swamp). And of course he had good taijutsu and strong elemental ninjutsu - paper is great, but there are circumstances in which you can't rely on it at all, such as against strong Fire Element users.

Edit: For anyone to whom this is useful, think more like Anita King than Maggie or Michelle. Presumably Konan would be Yomiko Readman.

Backstory-wise, I think @eaglejarl has pretty much covered it in his story posts. If there's something specific you want more information on, feel free to poke him.
 
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I think the current infodump we've gotten should be enough to determine our next location. Waterfall and Tea are allied with major villages (Earth and Fire, respectfully) and are economically powerful when compared to Iron which appears to have little in terms of allies and a functional economy. I don't think there's a compelling reason to not go to Iron, at least in short term, unless I'm mistaken about something?
 
@faflec if we blend into a town we don't really care who their government is or isn't allied with.
What we care more about is how large the town is (easier to blend in and not be discovered) and how rich the town is (better things to steal).
 
Re-enforce via chakra sounds like it would not be to hard to learn. It almost seems like Nasu version of the skill of the same name, unless it is limited only to specially treated paper. We might be able to reverse engineer this one from what it says on the description.
 
Notice that a city's size and prosperity tend to go hand in hand.

Large rich cities tend to be found in large rich countries.

But large rich countries have lots of ninja.

We should ask Inoue sensei which country she thinks will strike the best balance of "not too many ninja to hide from" and "large cities to hide in with lots of shiny things to steal".
 
Just realized not all of my questions were answered. Will wait on infodump for Rivers/Clawfang/tracking policy.
 
So, if I'm surmising correctly, Tea is more dangerous than we thought, but still doesn't have a central ninja village, Sea seems to be the place where missing nin default to, creating some sort of Ninja Pirate based turf system likely, Iron is pretty safe, and Snow is a black hole to go to if we ever want to truly disappear. That means it is either a really good option, or a really bad option.

Side note, until bounties come out, missing nins seem to be a 'clean up your own mess' sort of deal. At least until they cause some real level of problem.

It also seems like traveling as merchants in disguise is going to be a real problem since we'd need ninja to escort us in order to provide a convincing cover. Something that would be highly dangerous in case they figure out we are ninjas ourselves.

Out of current options, Iron still seems the best for temporary training, but it's going to be immensely harder to pass ourselves off as wanderers without raising too much attention. So either we should wander in places where the area is poor or buckle down in a large city.

Either way, I'm still in support for Iron to be the first stop for basic infiltration training. We need something beyond that though. I think our next stop should be something where we can gain resources of some kind to help save mom. That's probably our nearest high demanding goal that we can set a plan to roughly build up to and measure what resources we will need.
 
But in all seriousness, I really doubt that most travelling merchants can afford a ninja escort. We should be good.

Still better safe than sorry, so I guess I'll ask on the infodump page what percentage of merchants get escorts.
 
If anyone wants to see paper manipulation in a high abundance situation, check out Read or Die for paper control in action.
 
Iron may be a good place to find a doton specialist missing-nin. That may not be a now thing, but we will want to find one at some point.

I assume a worked out mine will still be worth a down on her luck earth master to raid for some funds...
 
So what resources do we need then?

Allies? Of what sort, those who travel on the road with us, those in political power, teachers, merchants that can get us goods and smuggle us across borders, a small army of elite ninja?

Ninja Gear? Seals, the cheaper end of ninja gear, strong weapons for the inevitable run in with strong bounty hunters, exotic goods for surprises to blindside people?

Learning Resources? People, scrolls, our own ingenuity and time?

Other things to gain us an advantage? I think the problems we will have to deal with immediately are going to be avoiding fights and winning fights when we can't. To save mom we're going to have to find a way to re-infiltrate Mist, convince mom to come with us (probably won't be too hard, especially since her committing suicide would be highly believable), and then sneak her back out of Mist. Ideally without anyone being the wiser, but able to run and shake off Mist hunter Nin should the need arise.

So that means our first major focus should be infiltration skills on a stupidly high level and a network of spies/associates that are able to help us. Ideally without them being any wiser.

Looking at the update, Grass sounds possible as an alternative to Iron. Probably not as good, but on the Meta level there may be a very slim chance of recruiting Karin. And by very slim I mean, since this is rationalverse and she is not only an Uzumaki, but one of relatively strong bloodline, she's insanely valuable and if they're stupid enough to not endear her to them (possible, even in rational land), then they are likely to hunt us down like crazy to get her back. Still, Karin is amazing, even if she hasn't come into her potential yet.
 
MadScientist said:
But in all seriousness, I really doubt that most travelling merchants can afford a ninja escort. We should be good.


Still better safe than sorry, so I guess I'll ask on the infodump page what percentage of merchants get escorts.
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@MadScientist: Answered. You made a good point, so we tweaked it. New answer:



There's some mercantile trade, much of which is escorted by ninja. Ninja escorts are expensive, so most trade takes the form of large caravans that club up to pay for protection. The rest of the trade is smaller startups -- one family, or a single civilian leader with some hired guards -- who get a cargo and head out, defending themselves and saving the money on the escort. Maybe 30-50% of these smaller groups can afford an escort.
 
On a side note, it's fully possible that the actual bs strengths of the Uzumakis as a bloodline are kept secret. They're only known for their seals. That means spiriting Karin away would be much more possible... Though still both incredibly unlikely and hard.
 
@bluefur87 No Karin. Not yet. We'd need to up our stealth, Henge, etc. skills until we're mini-Inoue, at least. AND we'd have to have a powerbase set up so we can keep her long enough to convert her. AND we need to actually convert her. It's a mid-term goal if we survive that long.
 
What if we joined a pre-existing low-budget/no-ninja travelling merchant band?

We could act as hunters/guards for the group, rob every city they stop in blind, and when the time comes to reveal our true nature, we have a ready made pool of minions who already feel good about us just sitting right there for the taking.
 
@MadScientist After we get to -newcountry-? Yeah, that's a pretty good idea. While we're still in Fire? Nope, not unless we're lucky enough to find one mid-travel. We want to get out of Fire ASAP and then move around.

We should still stagger our robberies to keep word from passing on/ninjas from noticing this merchant group shows up whenever a city gets robbed blind. Maybe focus on stealing stuff that is useful to us (as ninjas) as opposed to taking whatever is sellable/usable?

Suddenly hiding in Waterfall doesn't seem that bad. Grass/Tea still seems a horrible idea.
 
Something that may be problematic is finding safe places to train. Most ninja arts are quite flashy and training them in a civilian town always risks detection. If anyone sees us practicing a Taijutsu kata at superhuman speed things will get messy. It will be hard to even train enough to keep ourselves at a steady level, nevermind making the huge gains we need. I think we will need to strike a careful balance between training in the wilderness and gathering resources of all sorts in towns.

Another problem we should deal with is Noburis barrel. It is quite distinctive, and given that his Clan is one of the most well known of the Mist that thing could get us into real trouble. I mean, his clan is on a level with Aburame and Inuzuka who even Hazou as a less than studious rookie Genin knows about. We need to find a way to conceal it, since the transformation is too chakra intensive for him to keep up 24/7. I hope Inoue has an idea, because i definitely haven't.

I personally am going to vote for going to Iron. First find a deserted mountain place to train ourselves up a little, then infiltrate a town, make contacts, go from there. What we need most right now is time to train. We have basic subsistence covered; if we survived the swamp we can survive anywhere. Ninja tools are something few of our team need, so what we have will likely last us a while. No grand objective for now, and we should go for minimal risk of discovery. Hole up, get better, then poke our head out and create an information network and access to a black market. Then we go from there.
 
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So this and 'The Second Uchiha', the only two Naruto quests I'm following, are going to have long wilderness training arcs with a hard-to-read* attractive female sensei.

Okay.

*I mean her mood, thoughts and feelings. Not actual story text. That's fine to read.
 
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Noburi's barrel is 10L. It's basically an oversized Coke bottle and can easily be hidden by putting a tarp over it, or putting it in a backpack. It's not like Noburi has to balance it over his head or something.
 
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