As opposed to any other "hidden" village? *quirks single eyebrow*
Okey dokey! We've got Nega Team Uplift, starring
- Mori Anna, the Emma Barnes expy
- Kurosawa Shin, the designated straightman
- Wakahisa Kiri, the laid back clique-member-trope
Let's go over their dialogue and behaviors in a bit more detail. If we ever interact with them (as would be narratively compelling given Anna's backstory, and
likely given their stated intention to
let us mess with their heads talk to us) then we want a good picture of how they think (and how to
exploit how they think).
The following is written from the premise of treating these characters as enemies who we are trying to stress to the point of quitting the exam, as previously discussed.
I was originally planning to write up a profile on all three genin, but this took longer than expected, so here's a vivisection of Mori Anna, the most interesting of the three and the easiest to destroy:
- Similar speech patterns to Kei, this might be a common trait of Mori.
- Confidence in her own intellect, especially in regards to "prediction" (?) as opposed to analysis. Could potentially make her feel vulnerable by forcing her into a chaotic situation that robs her of that strength.
- Possibly derisive of people who aren't as smart as she is. Would need further examples to establish a pattern of thinking rather than a one-off frustration.
- Please tell me Kei knows the story behind that nickname. Please.
- Something scary happened to team Kanon (do we know who they are?) and it's shaken Anna. If we can evoke similarities, even superficial ones, then that will help us get under her skin.
- Further evidence that she prides herself on her ability to predict outcomes. What actually happened doesn't match what she thought would happen. That scared her and she latched onto it, refusing to let the subject drop.
- A degree of social awareness that beats Shin's. We don't know Shin's social skill-level, but it's implied to be a lot smoother than Hazou's was before he started training with Mari.
- Notices that the evidence doesn't fit the narrative. Yeah, yeah, we know you're smart.
- Traps are beaten by Awareness, so at the time of that exercise, Anna's Awareness was low. The question is, did she continue with a low-Awareness build? If so, we need to sic Sakura on her in ground prepared by Akane.
- Weirdly dissmissive of Hazou and Noburi. If you eliminate Kei as the reason for our success, then shouldn't her teammates be the first thing you look at? What bias causes Anna to suspect Hazou and Noburi must also be incompetent? Can we use it?
- Deeply ashamed of her past self. Oh this is too good. Such a wonderful button to press. And so many ways we could press it! We could have two of our team members roleplay the personalities of young!Anna and young!Kei while we talk to them, we could have Kei act out the role of young!Anna treating present!Anna the way young!Anna treated young!Kei, we could mockingly refer to things as "supercool". All these options!
- So, now we know what she hates about her past self, we just flip them around to find the traits she values in her present self: Maturity. Realism/Cynicism. Vocabulary, and an ability to hold her tongue. If we want to damage her self-image then we should either poison these concepts somehow (for example, putting her into a situation where being jaded causes her to miss opportunities that a naive person spots), or set things up so that she comes to believe that she hasn't changed, hasn't grown, that she's still an idiot child who can't keep her mouth shut. That the fact she thought she'd improved only means that she's incapable of self-awareness.
- It would be really funny if we had Kei affect the air of the most enthusiastic extrovert ever. Just... imagine: Anna is expecting social-turtle withdrawn as deeply as possible into her shell, but gets "HEEEYAAA GUUUUYS! NO TIME LONG SEE! Oops? Hehe. Soooooooooooooooo! Whad't you gals been up to, huh? Huh? Did Minori and Joutarou hook up yet? OMIGOSH those two would just be ADORABLE!!!!1!"
- Maybe there's a way we could play on that? Display Kei as an actual lone wolf badass (as opposed to terrified introvert) and rekindle that old admiration? Might be hard at this point, but Mari believes in us!
- Oh hey, a nerve we can touch! Neat!
- Yeaaaah... You shouldn'ta did that. To the Summoner daughter of the hokage and teammate of Yog-sothoth.
- Dial it back, Emma.
- Point of fact: Kei's social skills are vastly better than Nega Team Uplift believes ("can't cooperate with others"? what?). We can use that.
- So, um, NTU believes Hazou to be the mastermind. If we can present him as totally incompetent then Anna is back in a position of not knowing who the mastermind is. That will set her on edge and make her not want to move against us.
- Kei, break out your acting skills. Don the mantle of alpha-bitch. And rub your betrothal in Anna's face.
- There's probably nothing useful here, but it's a good thing to notice in case we ever need to play up that angle somehow for whatever reason.
- Ooh! A reaction! I wonder what would happen if Kei kissed her full on the mouth unexpectedly. Followed by "Meh. Last one was better."
- I wouldn't say helpless, but they would be down a team leader with a hivemind in his brain. Hmn. We should probably try to improve Noburi's abilities as a lieutenant in case of unexpected Hazoucide.
- Also, eliminate Hazou? Ominous. Could we trick people into thinking that there never was a Hazou? Just Noburi's been walking around with a henged Water Clone and making it say his ideas? And also there never was a Noburi. Or a Kei. The Pangolins have just been slowly infiltrating our reality using human disguises and-- Nah. Easier to just make people think we're lupchanzed.
- Cling to that shred of empathy, Anna. For your own sake.
- If we want to play up the "you almost got Kei deaded" angle and beat her over the head with guilt we could just tell the truth about some of the things that we went through. Or put Hazou's "make shit up" skill to good use. The latter preserves OPSEC. It would be hard to open that scar up, but if we could do it, we could pretty easily start pouring venom into the wound.
- Nervous about meeting Kei again? Good. Let's make it really obvious where we are to speed up the meeting. Having Anna off-balance and in a state where we can wind her up into a public meltdown would be excellent.
