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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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[X] Naruto's reaction to his new siblings and Jiraiya's upcoming marriage.
[X] Sasukes reaction to a Kurosawa becoming the son of Jiraiya.
 
[X] The rest of the world reacts to Clan Goketsu's formation
[x] Neji's immediate reaction to finding out Noburi is now Jiraiya's son
[X] Hiashi's immediate reaction to being told that Skywalkers requires saying "Pretty Pink Pony no Jutsu" to activate.

[X] The Fire Daimyo's cat learns about Lupchanzen.
 
[X] Jiraya's thoughts on marriage.
[X] Tobi being a good boy (?)
[X] Orochimaru preparing a wedding present.
[X] Kisame playing catch with Samehada.
[X] Itachi testing new genjutsus.
[X] The late third hokage thoughts on Jiraya's marriage.
[X] Sakura and inner Sakura talking about our team.
[X] Keiko is suddenly reverse summoned to attend a party.

Gonna stop now. Things just kinda flowed.
 
Akatsunami said:
[X] The late third hokage thoughts on Jiraya's marriage.
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From the looks of it, his reaction was primarily "Who is this person and what has he done with Jiraiya" and dispelling.

OliWhail said:
So, in a continuing trend of characters reacting to incentives the QMs had failed to consider initially, I give you the following scene:

Chapter 116.3: Wot Bwings Us Togevah​

Sarutobi Hiruzen's doors were shoved open. "Sensei, we need to talk," Jiraiya proclaimed. "Privately."

"Hm? What's going on, Jiraiya?" Hiruzen inquired, setting down the most recent scout reports from the Hot Springs border.

His student didn't reply immediately, instead making a tour of the room to activate the various privacy seals scattered around. He then turned to the ANBU standing unobtrusively in the corner. "Out! Tango-delta-Charlie-Romeo-47." The young woman nodded and scampered away immediately.

"Jiraiya, what in the world is going on?" Hiruzen asked again, much more seriously.

"I'm getting married, sensei."

It was all Hiruzen could do to snap his jaw shut rather than letting it hang open. Even having heard Jiraiya give his security code not ten seconds ago, Hiruzen seriously considered attacking the man in front of him as an impostor, and a poor one at that. Of course, an impostor skilled enough to get that code would have been skilled enough to say something more believable, unless they were deliberately saying something as shocking as possible to throw him off-balance, etc, etc, etc....

Hiruzen considered all of this in a fraction of a second, which culminated in a short and deeply skeptical "Oh?"

Jiraiya nodded resolutely. "To Inoue Mari."

Hiruzen reflexively dispelled, and then blinked several times as the world around him completely failed to dissolve. "...come again?" he said eventually.

"Team Mari reported in. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse, which included my marriage to their jounin-sensei for the purpose of founding a new clan."

"...you're going to need to give me a little more explanation than that," Hiruzen said carefully. "Substantially more, in fact. What could they have possibly offered you that would be worth giving up the independence you've sought to maintain for so long? Not to mention having to deal with all the political squabbling needed to keep the clans from heavily resisting, or even openly rebelling when they hear you're planning on forming a clan with a bunch of missing nin--"

"One, once they're in a clan, they won't be missing nin anymore," Jiraiya cut in. "They'd be Leaf. They'd be ours. Two, she cares about as much about the whole monogamy thing as I do. Three, remember that this is the group who came up with the skytowers. The seal they're offering this time is an order of magnitude more important."

Hiruzen sighed. "Jiraiya, I worry you may be letting your enthusiasm for fuinjutsu cloud your judgement somewhat."

"They call them 'skywalkers. Seals that let you run on thin air."

*Blink. Blink.* "...come again?" Hiruzen said, again, caught completely off-guard for the second time in as many minutes.

"They ran from Snow to the island west of Sea without ever touching the ground or being spotted by anyone, including our airborne scouts. Think about it, sensei. Avoid any and all patrols, no dealing with chakra beasts, staying out of unfavorable combat, flexible high-altitude bombing, keeping skytowers perpetually supplied with no way for enemies to reach them. This changes everything."

"You've seen these for yourself?"

Jiraiy nodded decisively. "And had Agent Black verify that the operational specs they gave me were honest."

"That's... certainly impressive," Hiruzen admitted, his head spinning. With a tool like that, the war on the horizon looked... significantly less frightening, to put it mildly. "I can't say that I see why this means you need to found a clan with a missing nin woman, though."

"It was one of their conditions. That, and adopting all the genin into it. I don't think they actually said anything about letting Kagome in, but hell with it, he should probably get at least honorary membership. He did all the real work, it sounds like. Hazou - the Kurosawa kid - just came up with the idea."

"It may have been one of their conditions, but surely you didn't have to accept their very first offer? Has the great diplomat forgotten how to negotiate?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Jiraiya asked. "They need a clan to keep their bloodline secrets and seal research safe. I need a clan to pass on knowledge and training to, to protect any heirs from interference by other clans, and to stop the endless lectures about how I don't understand the importance of family," he said, finishing with more than a twinge of bitterness. "None of us can join established clans. Inoue Mari is hot and compatible in terms of personality. Mori is the Pangolin summoner, so Leaf gets that extra firepower. Kurosawa is apparently some kind of Sealing prodigy who could both benefit from and contribute to my own work. Kagome is an accomplished sealmaster, and Leaf could always use more of those. Wakahisa is a budding medic. Realistically, I'm not going to get a better opportunity to found my own clan and shake up the conservative bloc. And to top it all off, I get to tell all the pricks on Councils who gave me shit for being soft on Team Mari to suck it."

Hiruzen was silent for a long minute, lighting his pipe and taking occasional contemplative puffs. "Fine," he said eventually. "If this is what you feel is best for Leaf and for your own happiness, then I am inclined to at least hear you out. After all, having a more progressive voice on the Clan Council can only be helpful, and frankly I can't wait to see Hiashi's face when he finds out. Now, obviously this can't become public until after the war has started. Or ended, as the case may be, thanks to these 'skywalkers'. Tell Kiyoshi to cancel my appointments for the rest of the day -- we will need to hash out a strategy for getting as many clans to go along with this without a fuss as we can manage.

"Tangentially, the Kurosawa boy seems... interesting. Once might be chance. Twice is, at the very least, a coincidence worth looking into."

"According to Agent Black, it's sounding like a lot more than twice, but I'd like to see a couple of the other ideas in action before I bank on them."

"As I said, interesting," Hiruzen replied, chewing his pipe contemplatively. "Very interesting. In any case, let's get to work. The place to start, I think would be the Nara...."


Agent Black and Mari-sensei spent several long minutes staring at one another before Agent Black confirmed that you guys weren't bullshitting.

Other important info re: clans and Leaf government:
  • There are three advisory councils to the Hokage, who retains ultimate dictatorial authority. However, substantial political maneuvering is often necessary to prevent resentments from building up. As @Velorien put it in chat: "Hiruzen has to have the overall support of the clans, because that is the source of his legitimacy. As soon as he loses that, he's ruling because he's the man with the biggest stick, and at that point he'll be facing physical rebellion from a village of ninja." If Hiruzen overrode the clans all day every day, they would at the very least drag their feet in getting missions done, and might eventually be pushed into actual rebellion given a sufficient weight of grievances. Even Sarutobi Hiruzen isn't especially fond of the idea of fighting a whole city full of goddamn kung-fu battle wizards.
    • The Merchant Council is made up of business owners and those responsible for the city's services, and is largely made up of civilians (though since clans often run businesses, there are ninja representatives as well).
    • The Clan Council is made up of the heads of every recognized Leaf clan. The specific legal benefits of being a clan revolve around a) a position in this body, to ensure that any concerns you have are heard by the Hokage, and b) the right to withhold information (e.g. about bloodlines, jutsu, and seals) from Leaf's government under laws governing clan secrets. Unless an innovation is claimed as such, those who developed it are expected to make it available to the broader community in exchange for reasonable compensation.
      • So, when Jiraiya / Keiko / Noburi say that clans won't want their privileges 'diluted', what they mean is that they don't want other people taking up the Kage's time and attention, and that they don't want other people to be able to withhold innovations that they / they broader community might make use of (and which might give the innovator some competitive advantage). There are also issues of deeply embedded traditions and ideas about nobility over which clans might oppose the formation of a new clan full of ex-missing nin, but those are more PR and less pragmatism.
      • The unwritten benefits include an unofficial, and to a large extent unspoken, agreement to collaborate on putting administrative, economic, and hypothetical-military pressure on the Hokage and non-clan groups to ensure that various clans' desires are catered to.
    • The War Council is made up of the top tactical and strategic minds Leaf has to offer, as well as the jounin who head the various wings of Leaf's military. The War Council meets regularly even when Leaf is neither at war nor planning to go to war in order to maintain plausible deniability.
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OliWhail said:
"Tangentially, the Kurosawa boy seems... interesting. Once might be chance. Twice is, at the very least, a coincidence worth looking into."

"According to Agent Black, it's sounding like a lot more than twice, but I'd like to see a couple of the other ideas in action before I bank on them."

"As I said, interesting," Hiruzen replied, chewing his pipe contemplatively. "Very interesting. In any case, let's get to work. The place to start, I think would be the Nara...."
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So, I have some thoughts. There's some clear subtext here, though it's not immediately obvious what it's referring to. However, consider:

Naruto Wiki said:
The Children of the Prophecy (予言の子達, Yogen no Ko-tachi) is a title for two people who were foretold to hold the fate of the world in their hands. These two, due to being the reincarnations of Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki's sons Indra and Asura Ōtsutsuki, were predicted to complete the sealing of Kaguya Ōtsutsuki and save the world. Naruto Uzumaki, the current reincarnation of Asura, and Sasuke Uchiha, the current reincarnation of Indra, were bestowed with powerful abilities from Hagoromo as well as the keys to the seal. In the Fourth Shinobi World War, Naruto and Sasuke successfully sealed Kaguya and undid the Infinite Tsukuyomi, thus rescuing the world and fulfilling the prophecy.
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We are descendents of Indra Ōtsutsuki as he was the progenitor of the Sharingan.
Naruto Wiki said:
The Child of the Prophecy (予言の子, Yogen no Ko) is a title conceived by the Great Toad Sage. He foretold that the Child of the Prophecy would be a student of Jiraiya that would bring a great revolution to the world of the ninja. Jiraiya's actions would determine if this revolution would be for the world's salvation or the world's destruction. Jiraiya believed, at different times, that the following characters could be the Child of the Prophecy:
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A great revolution, huh?
 
Cariyaga said:
He did not change anything. In our actions so far we've already broken the missing nin accords :p
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Uh, he pretty much singlehandedly disabused the Elemental Nations of the notion that massed Chunin would do shit to an S-Ranker, ditto for the entire rest of Elemental Nations, and also managed to cow basically the entire rest of the Elemental Nations into not pouncing on Fire after his death for years on end.

If that's not a change, I don't know what is.
 
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Uh, he pretty much singlehandedly disabused the Elemental Nations of the notion that massed Chunin would do shit to an S-Ranker, ditto for the entire rest of Elemental Nations, and also managed to cow basically the entire rest of the Elemental Nations into not pouncing on Fire after his death for years on end.
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Eh, I might be underestimating his impact. I mean, from my perspective, he didn't do much more than a deployed jinchuuriki would do (although I am almost certain they are never used on the offense).
 
faflec said:
Everyone breaks the missing-nin accords since they're useful deniable assets, we were just the first ones to make it official.
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That's... kind of the point, though. Making it official is a big change; it means that loyalty structures for nations completely change; no longer can nations tell their ninja that there is no hope out there in the world without the village, because Leaf was willing to take them in.

e: Gosh dangit I'm not crazy! Faflec posted!!
 
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Cariyaga said:
e: Gosh dangit I'm not crazy! Faflec posted!!
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It gets worse. I experimentally clicked on @faflec's location. For reasons unknown, it's persistently giving me a list of gyms in my local area. Not, you know, places called "location" or anything. Gyms.

Worse still, I tried clicking on a random point in Russia on Google Maps to try and reset it. I got a тренировочный зал. Or, in English, a gym.

There is some kind of conspiracy here.
 
Velorien said:
It gets worse. I experimentally clicked on @faflec's location. For reasons unknown, it's persistently giving me a list of gyms in my local area. Not, you know, places called "location" or anything. Gyms.

Worse still, I tried clicking on a random point in Russia on Google Maps to try and reset it. I got a тренировочный зал. Or, in English, a gym.

There is some kind of conspiracy here.
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I know of at least three player conspiracies of varying levels of secrecy. Wouldn't surprise me if there were more. :p
 
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