Will fully admit to using spin. However we have a tool that's supposed to work on facilitating communication. In this instance it didn't work. So instead of considering that it's not the right tool for this situation we react poorly to Minami not responding to it. Then we decide to double down on it in the next update instead of changing our tactics based on new evidence. If it works well in this update I will stop talking about it. But if it goes poorly again I will suggest we try new tactics on making friends with Minami. Like maybe have her meet the next contact instead of Hazō and Kei
A) abandoning our attempt* didn't come with the attached pricetag of never being able to use CCnJ with Minami, or her learning to use it herself.
or
B) Minami's failure to understand CCnJ and Hazou's failure to explain it weren't based on factors we can change (as I said above, I believe that Minami will get that it's sincere if she observes us using it between ourselves).
Edit: * which refers to our attempt to teach her CCnJ at all, not specifically our attempt to initially bond with her using CCnJ.
Glad I saw that edit. ccnj is a very valuable tool once a rapport has been established. I just think it's a terrible tool to bond with people. And our doubling down on it will just diminish it's future value. But who knows I might be completely wrong
Glad I saw that edit. ccnj is a very valuable tool once a rapport has been established. I just think it's a terrible tool to bond with people. And our doubling down on it will just diminish it's future value. But who knows I might be completely wrong
I believe the idea you've got of the thread "doubling down" is harming your perspective.
My proposed course of action, for example, is to use both the "normal socialising" approach (or as close to it as Hazou-the-awkward can get) and CCnJ in tandem, and having Minami observe the use of CCnJ between people who aren't her in conversations that aren't about her. I believe this will ease her into the idea of CCnJ really being sincere, while also providing her with more familiar footing for building a rapport.
I'm not sure how I would describe that, but "doubling down" doesn't fit.
I believe the idea you've got of the thread "doubling down" is harming your perspective.
My proposed course of action, for example, is to use both the "normal socialising" approach (or as close to it as Hazou-the-awkward can get) and CCnJ in tandem, and having Minami observe the use of CCnJ between people who aren't her in conversations that aren't about her. I believe this will ease her into the idea of CCnJ really being sincere, while also providing her with more familiar footing for building a rapport.
I'm not sure how I would describe that, but "doubling down" doesn't fit.
What I mean by doubling down is how we have explicit knowledge that Minami responds poorly to ccnj and we immediately vote in a plan using it. So instead of trying to course correct we use the same tool again immediately. It's a valuable tool but we can't have it be the only social gambit we explicitly use. Especially when we know Minami didn't respond well to it.
I agree we can still use it. Just say be less heavy handed with it. Though I expect our using it again immediately will make it much less effective
Edit: also Minami might have bad experience with her breakup with the Nara which might color her opinion of Hazō
What I mean by doubling down is how we have explicit knowledge that Minami responds poorly to ccnj and we immediately vote in a plan using it. So instead of trying to course correct we use the same tool again immediately. It's a valuable tool but we can't have it be the only social gambit we explicitly use. Especially when we know Minami didn't respond well to it.
I agree we can still use it. Just say be less heavy handed with it. Though I expect our using it again immediately will make it much less effective
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The only reference to CCNJ in my plan was that we use it with the other members of the team to acclimate her to its use, not with her. I think that's a distinction very much worth making.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The only reference to CCNJ in my plan was that we use it with the other members of the team to acclimate her to its use, not with her. I think that's a distinction very much worth making.
Anyone else thinking about how Suna reacts to Leaf having official missing-nin? Like, aren't we still listed in the Bingo Books as international terrorists?
Anyone else thinking about how Suna reacts to Leaf having official missing-nin? Like, aren't we still listed in the Bingo Books as international terrorists?
Oh god Kagome. Guy thinks Suna is controlled by a fucking Jinchuriki and its water supply is a fucking mind-control drug. Really should go in and get out, fuck any mission.
Since it is a Hidden Village though, official visit and all...probably tends to avoid needing physical muscle.
Oh god Kagome. Guy thinks Suna is controlled by a fucking Jinchuriki and its water supply is a fucking mind-control drug. Really should go in and get out, fuck any mission.
Since it is a Hidden Village though, official visit and all...probably tends to avoid needing physical muscle.
"Sir," Hazō said slowly, "when you say that you want us to bring Mr. Shirakawa to you 'alive or freshly dead', it sounds a lot like you intend to feed him to your giant chakra snake-monster."
The old man studied him, head cocked to the side in puzzlement.
Not bothering.
"Yep," the old man said.
"Oh."
"What's the problem? You're ninja, you kill people all the time."
Hazō looked at Keiko; she raised a very expressive eyebrow. Don't look at me, the eyebrow said. I don't do plan creation and, although I'm onboard with your 'uplift all the civilians' idea, I'm not so invested that I won't make an exception here and there. Such as, just by way of example, killing a random gangster-wannabe who intends to hurt people to increase his own money and power. Especially when killing said wannabe will help a member of Jiraiya's network whom we have every motivation to help because helping his agents improves the chances of making Jiraiya look good, which will make us look good, which will improve our chances of acceptance by the Leaf elders, which will in turn improve the chances of the aforementioned 'uplift all the civilians' plan coming to fruition. Also, the entire point of this mission is, firstly, to find our new clan leader's godson, the jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails without whom our new home village is at serious risk of extinction and, second, to reinforce the position of our new clan-leader-cum-Hokage (or at least not damage it), so helping his agents would be a positive action.
It was a very expressive eyebrow.
Hazō sighed at the eyebrow and then turned back to the shopkeeper. "I don't suppose I could convince you to go with intimidation instead of killing, could I? I mean, if you two could make an agreement it could be good for both of you. He'd be useful to you as a source of information and to keep other gangs away. You'd be useful to him since, being a wealthy merchant, you'd be a great contact through which to dispose of property he might have acquired extralegally."
The old man raised an eyebrow; it was far less expressive than Keiko's in that all it conveyed was amusement. "So, you prefer not to kill people but you're fine with gangsters climbing up the hierarchy where they will be running drugs, prostitution, and protection rackets? Oh, and let's not forget having people killed—shopkeepers who fail to pay the protection money, other criminals who try to muscle in on their turf, and any sheriff who tries to stop them?"
"Um."
Thankfully, Keiko stepped in. "As we mentioned previously, we will need to talk to our squad leader before we can decide to accept or reject your request," she said. "Given that our mission is urgent my expectation would be that if she chooses to accept the mission then we would accomplish it nearly immediately. Midnight at the very latest, so if you don't hear from us by then it means that we had to move on."
The old man snorted and shrugged fatalistically. "Fair enough. I suppose if you're not willing to do it I'll just have to hire a ninja of my own before he hires his. Really rather not; it's expensive."
"Right," Hazō said. "Well, we'll keep that in mind. In the meantime, do you mind if I browse around a bit?"
"Help yourself, I'm not going anywhere."
Ten minutes later, Hazō was starting to despair. The shop was full of gaudiness, frippery, and large and/or heavy things. None of it was appropriate for an active field ninja, much less for Akane.
Just as he was about to give up entirely, a small gleam of silver and red caught his eye in one of the display cases off to the side. It was a single blood-red stone, a little smaller than his pinky nail, carved in the shape of a flame and set in silver. Two additional stones, pale green and carved in the shape of leaves, were held alongside, suggesting the leaves of a flower.
"Good eye," the shopkeeper said, nodding approvingly. "One carat Earth-country ruby, silver setting, point-seven-five carat peridot complements. Lovely piece. Arrived yesterday; had several offers on it already, actually. Are you interested?"
"Yes," Hazō said. "How much?"
"Sixty-five thousand ryo," the shopkeeper said blandly.
Hazō choked. "Sixty-five thousand?!"
"If you do the job I'll knock off ten thousand. Professional discount, like I said."
"I'll...need to get back to you."
o-o-o-o
"Welcome back," Nikkō said, as Kurosawa and Mori came through the trees to rejoin the rest of the team. "Any problems?"
"No," said Kurosawa. "Although he did ask for a side mission. There's a guy named Shirakawa trying to muscle his way up the local crime hierarchy. The contact would like us to capture him and bring him in 'alive or freshly dead'. I think he wants to feed Shirakawa to his pet chakra snake, Bitey." He paused, shaking his head in amazement at having to utter that sentence. "Anyway, he's willing to trade us some of Bitey's venom plus a store discount if we do it."
"What does the venom do?"
Kurosawa shrugged helplessly. "No idea. All he could tell us was that a sage had told him the venom was probably full of chakra."
Nikkō looked to her left. "Wakahisa, you're the medic. What can you tell me? Anything useful we could do with chakra snake venom?"
Wakahisa shrugged. "No idea, honestly. I've mostly focused on human medicine, primarily trauma, and I don't know much about poison. Still, it sounds pretty great and I'd like to get it if we could. I know the theory on how to produce antivenoms, although I've never actually done it. Alternatively, we could put it in a misterator and use it for a poison fog attack. Could be useful."
"Hm." Nikkō paused to think. This could be good; capturing a civilian would be a nice cakewalk exercise that would maybe help the rest of them see her as more than dead weight. It was a distraction from the main mission and the Hokage had strongly underlined the need for speed, but if it was just capturing a civilian then that wouldn't take more than an hour. "Kurosawa, what did you find out about the target?"
Quickly, the genin filled her in on the sketchy details that they had received.
"All right, we're doing this," Nikkō said, nodding. "We'll—get the plan together and then go." Careful, Nikkō, you almost screwed that up. The point was to show that she respected the kids by inviting their comments while still maintaining a leadership position. The task was so straightforward that she'd nearly just started issuing orders before managing to redirect the sentence. "I want this done and us on the road before sundown. Mori, any comments or objections?"
Mori seemed surprised to be asked; had she really expected Minami to not consult someone that the Hokage had announced was on the level of a Nara? Wow. They really did have a low opinion of her.
"No objections at this time," the girl said. "Thank you for asking."
"Right," Nikkō said, carefully suppressing a sigh. "I don't want anything complicated. In, grab the guy, out. Better if we're not seen taking him but I don't care too much as long as we aren't seen dropping him off at the shop. Suggestions?"
"Well," Wakahisa said, "the contact—actually, what's his name?"
Kurosawa and Mori looked at each other. "We never asked," Kurosawa admitted.
"Okay, well, I hereby dub him Shopkeeper Riku," Nikkō said, just to put the topic to bed. "So, planning time. Basic idea: we go to the docks, find out which warehouse these idiots are hanging out in, clear it, and bring this nitwit back to Riku. Comments and suggestions?"
"I did have a suggestion," Kurosawa said diffidently. Wakahisa snorted a snort of complete unsurprise.
o-o-o-o
Noburi, Stealth:
11d100: 431
Mook #1, Awareness, Result: Class A failure
Mook #2, Awareness, Result: Class A failure
Mook #3, Awareness, Result: Class A success!
Shirikawa, Awareness, ?d100: Class B failure
Noburi, TacMov (drain Mook #3 before he escapes), Result: Class B success!
Shirikawa Takao was an important man. Not as important as he intended to be, but getting there. He had gotten his first dragon tattoo (granted, it was a small one and blue, not red) and still had all his fingers after two years, so he was on the right track to climbing the ladder. He just needed to show the bosses that he could take and hold territory. Hence the meeting tonight in which his top three enforcers were getting their marching orders despite all the whining they'd been doing.
"Look, Suzuki," Shirikawa said. "We need that shop or we look like chumps for having a hole in the middle of the block. Everyone pays. That's the rule."
Suzuki shifted nervously. "They really don't want to pay, boss. Hirota may be gettin' on, but he's plenty tough."
Yamasaki snorted, enjoying his fellow's discomfiture. "Yeah, and after he punched you in the face his wife hit you with that rolling pin."
"Yamasaki!"
Ueda was about to join in the fun of picking on his bruised-up coworker, when suddenly his head snapped up and he pointed into the rafters. "Look out! There's a—"
A wooden disk tumbled from the ceiling, landing directly at Shirikawa's feet. It bounced once before the gangster could even start to move. Then a fogbank exploded everywhere and the world went dark.
o-o-o-o
"Here you go," Minami said, dumping Shirakawa's unconscious and thoroughly-bound body on the counter. "We'll take the venom."
"Of course, of course!" chortled the still-unknown shopkeeper, rubbing his hands in glee. "Oh, well done! Well done. Bitey will be so happy."
"Whatever. Just pay us."
Hazō was surprised and a little alarmed at the shifting faces of his squad leader. When they had first met her, Minami had been a bright and cheerful chatterbox, bubbly and talkative enough to drive Keiko to the edge. Last night she had been an inquisitor, digging out the truth with unrelenting persistence yet avoiding classified or sensitive areas with the precision of a surgeon. There had been a...rage was definitely the wrong word. Understanding? Resentment? Maybe some of each? Whatever, there had been something behind it, something intense. What he was seeing now was that intensity frozen into ice. The hard, uncaring assassin that civilians all seemed to think of when they thought of ninja. Very much at odds with the happy-go-lucky and cheerful Minami they had met at first.
Who was this woman?
While he had been ruminating the shopkeeper had dropped a small vial in his squad leader's hand. "We're done here," Minami said, turning for the door.
Hazō cast one longing look at the ruby pin—far out of his price range, he wasn't even sure what he'd been thinking—and scrambled to follow his squad leader.
Target Number, notice Hazō's glance:
500
Kagome, Awareness, Result: 145 - Class C, Total Domination!
"What's that?" Kagome-sensei demanded, grabbing Hazō's arm. "What are you looking at? Is it a trap? Do I need—"
"No, sensei, it's not a trap," Hazō hurried to say. He checked to make sure that Akane was already outside and lowered his voice anyway. "It's just a pin that I wanted to get for Akane's birthday. Forget it. Come on, we need to go."
"Hang on," Kagome-sensei said suspiciously. "Why are you saying forget it? You like Akane, right?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then why aren't you getting her a birthday present?"
"I can't afford it, that's all."
Kagome grabbed him by the collar and dragged him over to the display case. He bent over, wiry fingers clenched in Hazō shirt and beaky nose an inch from the pin in question.
"Hmph," said Kagome-sensei, straightening. "You! Sneaky counter guy! How much?" He jabbed a finger at the pin.
The storekeeper bustled over, a professional smile on his face. "Wonderful eye, sir. Earth-country ruby with—"
"Don't care. How much?"
The shopkeeper's smile got a bit frostier. "Fifty-five thousand ryo, sir."
Kagome-sensei grunted and shuffled around in his voluminous pockets for a moment before producing a storage scroll. A moment later Hazō was having to catch his balance as a seemingly enormous bag of ryo appeared from extradimensional space and plopped into his hands.
"Here," Kagome-sensei said to Hazō. "Sixty thousand seven hundred and nineteen ryo. Buy the pin."
Hazō blinked. "Sensei, I can't...this is your money, I can't—" He pushed the bag towards Kagome-sensei helplessly.
Kagome-sensei shoved the bag back at him and stepped away. "Happy birthday, that's your present," he grumbled. "There, now it's your money. Go buy her something nice and it better be the pin." He turned and pushed out of the store, nearly barreling over Minami as she ducked back in to find out what was taking so long.
Minami stopped and looked around: paranoid sealmaster leaving in a hurry while grumbling under his breath. Frosty storeowner struggling to conceal anger at said sealmaster and gratitude at his departure. Hazō standing helplessly with a giant bag of money, eyes wide and shocked.
Minami raised an eyebrow at her subordinate. In reply, Hazō pointed helplessly at the pin. Minami nodded.
"I'll keep her distracted," she said, ducking back outside.
Hazō blinked. Twice. And then turned to the store owner. "I'd...like to buy this pin, please?"
XP AWARD: 5
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, May 17, 2017, at 12pm London time.
I am completely out of energy of every kind so the proofreading on this has been shoddy at best and the post-facto editing has been nil. There were a couple of major scenes partially written and then removed (for which you should all be grateful) but no real structural checking was done. Sorry about that. Kindly post typos and I'll fix them.
EDIT: Also, I'll update the XP counts on the character sheets tomorrow.
"All right, we're doing this," Nikkō said, nodding. "We'll—get the plan together and then go." Keep it together, Ni. The point was to show that she respected the kids by inviting their comments while still maintaining a leadership position. The task was so straightforward that she'd nearly just started issuing orders before managing to redirect the sentence. "I want this done and us on the road before sundown. Mori, any comments or objections?"
Mori seemed surprised to be asked; had she really expected Minami to not consult someone that the Hokage had announced was on the level of a Nara? Wow. They really did have a low opinion of her.
Hazō was surprised and a little alarmed at the shifting faces of his squad leader. When they had first met her, Minami had been a bright and cheerful chatterbox, bubbly and talkative enough to drive Keiko to the edge. Last night she had been an inquisitor, digging out the truth with unrelenting persistence yet avoiding classified or sensitive areas with the precision of a surgeon. There had been a...rage was definitely the wrong word. Understanding? Resentment? Maybe some of each? Whatever, there had been something behind it, something intense. What he was seeing now was that intensity frozen into ice. The hard, uncaring assassin that civilians all seemed to think of when they thought of ninja. Very much at odds with the happy-go-lucky and cheerful Minami they had met at first.
Kagome-sensei grunted and shuffled around in his voluminous pockets for a moment before producing a storage scroll. A moment later Hazō was having to catch his balance as a seemingly enormous bag of ryo appeared from extradimensional space and plopped into his hands.
"Here," Kagome-sensei said to Hazō. "Sixty thousand seven hundred and nineteen ryo. Buy the pin."
Even if it's not 100% our fault I still feel bad for it, we need to spend more time focusing on our team. Which, fortunately, this update gives us time to do, since we're not immediately at the next mission yet we can spend some time on that.
I'd like to chat with Nobby in the next plan, I actually want to hear what the missionsidequest short restful break was like from his end. It sounds like we'd just hear some thumping and then see Nobby walking out with the dude.
I'd like to chat with Nobby in the next plan, I actually want to hear what the missionsidequest short restful break was like from his end. It sounds like we'd just hear some thumping and then see Nobby walking out with the dude.
Speaking of whom, Jashin he rolled badly on his Stealth roll. Seriously, a civilian thug spotted him. Think that's something we can poke fun at him over?
1. If you want Hazou to have a firm "no killing except if absolutely required in direct self-defense" philosophy then it's probably possible, but requires a lot more groundwork than one half-hearted protest.
Side note and not really on topic: It's my private theory that there are ninjas who get absolutely sick of a life of violence and don't want to do it anymore. I mean, it happens to members of the warrior elite all through real world history. The normal channel for that sentiment is religion, joining a monastery or the equivalent and taking holy vows of non-violence. It wouldn't surprise me if there are an awful lot of ex-ninja populating the monasteries of the Elemental Countries.
2. This is what a ninja mission not involving enemy ninja is supposed to go like. Over in a few rolls.
3. Hazou's observations on Minami contrasted to her own internal narration is pretty interesting. From outside she seems like an ever-changing woman of many faces. From inside she's just trying desperately to hold it together and figure out how to earn the respect of her team. It does sort of point to me why CCNJ isn't so common. Ninja are people of many masks, and just being on somone's team doesn't necessarily mean a level of intimacy where you're comfortable letting your teammates behind that mask.
Assuming he has spent 15% of his experience on Awareness, he has on the order of 15000 experience total. This equates to almost 14 years of 3 xp per day, probably upper Jounin.
If he's spent more like 30% of it on Awareness, that would put him at about 8000 experience. This equate to a little over 7 years of 3 xp per day, which is probably high chuunin or on the low end of Jounin.
