Hazou stared down at the seal in front of him with a frown.
The seal stared back up at Hazou.
Hazou brought his club down and splattered the seal's brains all over the walls.
(And by "seal" I of course mean "Noburi". You should have already realised that because they are both aquatic mammals, and therefore make excellent metaphors for each other.)
"It's okay," said Hazou, "I'll just bring you back with necromancy OH WAIT I CAN'T BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO VOTE FOR IT."
At this point, Kei glared at the author and made a "get on with it" gesture. Then she rolled her eyes and walked out of the room.
Hazou picked up the eyes (which had rolled nearly all the way across the floor by this point) and, like some kind of fucking manic, attempted to implant them into himself. Kei's eye's change when she uses her bloodline, so maybe it was a doujutsu. Therefore it made sense to not let such valuable eyeballs go to waste. Unfortunately, after tearing out his own eyes, Hazou found that he was blinded and screaming in pain (which was very similar to screaming in Kagome, but with more references to gathering the bijuu) and generally in no fit state to be performing surgery on himself.
"Well now you've written yourself into a corner and you're just having me burst into the room wielding a rubber chicken. This is completely lazy writing and I write porn." complained Jiraiya, bursting into the room wielding a rubber chicken.
"I'm not a chicken!" complained the rubber academy student, trying to extricate himself from Jiraiya's grip.
"Bwark! Bwark! Bwark!" Jiraiya taunted.
"I'm not!" The child was crying now.
Little did Jiraiya know that "now" was a secret keyword to summon the watchers.
Little did the academy student know the watchers aren't actually a conspiracy of reality-safeguarding sealmasters, but rather a child-company owned by rolex, and would not be in any way helpful to his situation.
"Would you like to buy a watch?" the representative asked.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jiraiya noticed Hazou committing suicide in protest at having the plot ignore him. However, since Hazou is the main character, I guess the story ends here. How unsatisfying.
Hazou stared down at the seal in front of him with a frown.
The seal stared back up at Hazou.
Hazou brought his club down and splattered the seal's brains all over the walls.
(And by "seal" I of course mean "Noburi". You should have already realised that because they are both aquatic mammals, and therefore make excellent metaphors for each other.)
"It's okay," said Hazou, "I'll just bring you back with necromancy OH WAIT I CAN'T BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS TO VOTE FOR IT."
At this point, Kei glared at the author and made a "get on with it" gesture. Then she rolled her eyes and walked out of the room.
Hazou picked up the eyes (which had rolled nearly all the way across the floor by this point) and, like some kind of fucking manic, attempted to implant them into himself. Kei's eye's change when she uses her bloodline, so maybe it was a doujutsu. Therefore it made sense to not let such valuable eyeballs go to waste. Unfortunately, after tearing out his own eyes, Hazou found that he was blinded and screaming in pain (which was very similar to screaming in Kagome, but with more references to gathering the bijuu) and generally in no fit state to be performing surgery on himself.
"Well now you've written yourself into a corner and you're just having me burst into the room wielding a rubber chicken. This is completely lazy writing and I write porn." complained Jiraiya, bursting into the room wielding a rubber chicken.
"I'm not a chicken!" complained the rubber academy student, trying to extricate himself from Jiraiya's grip.
"Bwark! Bwark! Bwark!" Jiraiya taunted.
"I'm not!" The child was crying now.
Little did Jiraiya know that "now" was a secret keyword to summon the watchers.
Little did the academy student know the watchers aren't actually a conspiracy of reality-safeguarding sealmasters, but rather a child-company owned by rolex, and would not be in any way helpful to his situation.
"Would you like to buy a watch?" the representative asked.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jiraiya noticed Hazou committing suicide in protest at having the plot ignore him. However, since Hazou is the main character, I guess the story ends here. How unsatisfying.
Not for the first time, Hazō wished the Iron Nerve weren't quite so automatic. Instead of being able to lose himself in the rhythm of writing out copies of the newly-extended contestant dossiers, he could sit back and wallow in guilt, shame, and self-recrimination.
Nobody had been able to come up with a safe way to get access to stamps from the Mizukage's office or other indications that the dossiers were genuinely Mist documents, so they'd decided to go with the second best option of leaving them anonymous. Team Kurenai hadn't been willing to add their names to the list, but Team Asuma was on board with claiming Shikamaru had been known to use precisely thrown shuriken to control an enemy's movements, and that Choji had been trained in an experimental hybrid Taijutsu style based on the Gentle Fist. They'd added other, more accurate info on foreign teams from Keiko's conversation with Jiraiya, with his blessing, as well as their own recollections and understanding of Team Downfall's capabilities, leaving only vague references to bloodlines.
Hazō set the final page aside to dry and stood up, running through a set of quick stretches. It was late enough now that the only people up would be those the teams had placed on watch shift. He'd taken first watch, since he had to write out the copies anyhow, and it had allowed the others to get at least a little rest. His turn was done, now - the next part was up to Keiko, Nakano, and Team Kurenai. He reached over to tap his sister lightly on the shoulder, but her eyes were already open. Silently, they nodded at each other, and she got up to leave the room as he woke Noburi for the next shift.
He woke up to the morning sunshine instead of to screaming, which suggested things hadn't gone completely wrong.
"Good morning," Keiko said quietly from the heavily-fortified watchman's position in the corner of the room. "Panashe reported a number of buildings in various states of repair and disrepair some miles east of the city which smelled of recent construction. Given her descriptions, I believe this indicates the event will be taking place at the eastern live-fire training grounds."
"I'm... confused," Hazō replied groggily. "Aren't the live exercise grounds to the north?"
"The current ones, yes. The eastern ones have not been in active use for some years - since before our time in the academy, in fact."
"I see. Well, it's something to share with the team when we get a chance, at least" Hazō said, still rubbing his eyes. "Did Panashe have anything to say about the layout of what they're building? Any clues about what they might be having us actually do?"
Keiko shook her head. "Her lack of familiarity with humans proved a hindrance there. I believe we will have to go with your plan of sending Team Kurenai to gather intel in person."
Hazō simply nodded.
Once Superteam Leaf had inhaled their morning rations, they gathered in Team Asuma's quarters to divide up the day's work. Team Kurenai agreed to be accompanied by Panashe to scout the location in more detail. Team Asuma decided their skills were well suited to investigating the craftsmen commissioned to build the lockboxes for the event, while Team Uplift volunteered to check in with their Yakuza friends.
-o-o-o-
The same steely-eyed receptionist greeted the Gōketsu trio as the last time they had visited the Chivalrous Organization's offices.
"Good morning ma'am," Noburi said smoothly. "It's nice to see you again. We would be grateful if you could inquire as to whether our honored uncle has a few moments to speak with us today, and give him on our apologies for failing to make an appointment in advance when we were last here."
The receptionist nodded curtly. "We've been expecting you. I was instructed to pass this along," she said, holding out a sheet retrieved from inside her desk, "accompanied by our own apologies for its brevity. Shall I mark you down for an appointment a couple days from now, or will that be all?"
"Um, yes, that would be fine," Noburi replied, somewhat taken aback, as he unfolded the sheet.
My young friends, it began,
Article:
Below is the information presently at our disposal related to the next of the events you will be facing, assuming you had no difficulty in the previous one. As I have mentioned, obtaining information on the Exams has proved more difficult with each passing event, and so I must apologize for the sparseness what we can offer you.
The event will begin at sunset tomorrow, and last at least two days, according to a pair of drunk proctors in a bar we help protect, who were loudly complaining about the amount of work they're having to put in. These individuals also referred to offensive and defensive teams or squads, though as they were, by this point, quite drunk, it was unclear what, precisely, they were meant to be attacking or defending. One possibility is suggested by the significant amount of construction material which has been ported out to the east of the city by individuals displaying ninja abilities, though it has not been made clear what, if anything, is actually being built.
Please tell your father I look forward to continuing our partnership, whatever the outcome of the next few days.
Yours,
It ended simply with a stylized character for 'Chivalry' in place of a signature.
The receptionist, who had been quietly reading over a document as the three genin scanned the note, coughed lightly, prompting the trio to shuffle sheepishly out the door and into a side alley.
"They're nothing if not efficient, I guess," Hazō mused.
"Yes, admirable of them," Keiko added, nodding. "The question, then, is how we might best use the rest of today, given the unexpected additional time from not having to wait around and then actually talk to the Oyabun."
"Our experience at the newer training grounds might be helpful for looking at whatever they're building at the old ones," Noburi offered. "And Ino-Shika-Cho has Nakano backing them up already. Why don't we try to catch up with Team Kurenai?"
-o-o-o-
The long and short of it, as they discussed with the team that evening, was that Mist was building what were very clearly interrogation facilities.
"They're kind of… big," Inuzuka surmised. "Bigger than I'd expect them to be if Mist is building all of them just for the Exams, at least."
"They are meant to house ten personnel on duty, typically three guard squads and an interrogation specialist, plus half a dozen prisoners," Keiko informed him. "Hyūga's sketches of the layout are similar to the ones we trained in at the academy - Mist will be able to continue using them after the exam for training, or even for actual T-and-I."
"Unless of course they somehow, mysteriously, get destroyed during the event," Noburi pointed out, glancing worriedly over at Hazō's distant gaze. He could almost see the explosive tags going off in his brother's mind. Kagome would be proud.
"They'll be destroyed in the event," Nara stated flatly. "The amount of construction material hauled to the locations sufficient to rebuild the facilities something like twice over."
"Twice, eh?" Nakano chimed in. "Multiple rounds, then?"
Nara nodded. "Then repair any damage at the end. Too many contestants no longer in whole squads to have that be the base unit, and enough rounds for each remaining contestant to be a squad leader over failed candidates would be long and costly, so teams will be made up of random combinations of contestants. "
"Oh good, random," Yamanaka practically spat. "In other words, all of us will just so happen to end up split apart and fighting each other."
"They cannot risk the underlying math outing them," Keiko commented, "but I suspect you are right in spirit."
Hinata tapped Noburi on the shoulder, distracting him from whatever was said next, to lean in and whisper in his ear, "Is Hazō alright?"
"Wha? Ah, um, yeah, that's just him… doing the Hazō thing," he mumbled in reply.
"...the Hazō thing?" she asked incredulously. "Is it… safe? He looks like your sister when she uses her bloodline."
"Ah, well, to be honest, the level of safety depends on what kind of shrimp-for-brains scheme he comes up with at the end of it. In this case, I suspect it's safe for us, and very, very dangerous for those poor buildings."
It is presently just after dinner on the 14th. Nobody has yet come to kill you for leaking their information. To the best of your knowledge, the fifth event seems to be some kind of team assault contest, based around four freshly-constructed T&I facilities in old training grounds several miles to the east of the city proper. These facilities have a couple miles between them, forming a square, with a small bunker built at the center.
As stated above, Shikamaru believes squads will almost certainly be comprised of ragtag sets of individuals from among the current contestants. Specifically, two rounds at four facilities for seventy two ninja means nine each on attack and defense each round.
If you want to do something other than, roughly, 'sleep in shifts, maintain security, get to the event on time', please vote in an action plan. If you are fine just doing that, please vote for [X] Default. Voting will end 9am New York time on Saturday, as per usual.
I apologize that this is leaving off at a point where you guys don't have much of a decision-space. A big part of that is that I expect there's going to be a significant QM spoons drain to get the remaining character sheets ready for this event, and a simpler planning situation asks for fewer of those.
I promise you'll have plenty to optimize soon enough.
These pair of updates covered roughly 24 hours. You have earned 5 regular and 5 brevity-bonus XP.
I mean, they're expecting to have to repair them, so none of that 'collateral damage' nonsense, and we have enough explosives between us to outfit a small army. We can probably accomplish our objectives by demolishing any building that gets in our way.
Is this the time to talk about working to make sure that one or two member of Team Uplift have the points to advance, even if it means that the other one or two don't?
Basically, if we're to face off with each other, there's an enormous opportunity to play saboteur to your side in order to make sure your teammate on the other side scores big. The only question is, who is the sacrifice?
How can we prevent the forts from being rebuilt? Could we steal the building supplies? I'm not saying do it, I'm just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
How can we prevent the forts from being rebuilt? Could we steal the building supplies? I'm not saying do it, I'm just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
We could... but then I suspect it would end up like the last event did, with this one called a mulligan. Eaglejarl would be sad, and we wouldn't be in the tournament.
Is this the time to talk about working to make sure that one or two member of Team Uplift have the points to advance, even if it means that the other one or two don't?
Basically, if we're to face off with each other, there's an enormous opportunity to play saboteur to your side in order to make sure your teammate on the other side scores big. The only question is, who is the sacrifice?
Before he goes to sleep, Hazō really should tell his siblings that he got dumped, because Hazō is prone enough to screwing up under pressure when he hasn't been dumped in a way that explicitly strikes at an old emotional sore spot (the fact he has to put effort into looking like a normal human being).
Something like (no pruning for word count):
[] Proto-plan: Hazō-Akane Aftermath
Sometime before the event while they're pretty sure they aren't being overheard, Hazō tells them Akane just dumped him.
It wasn't a fight, but it was still pretty bad. Details can wait until after the event, because he's not interested in dwelling on it.
This is about transparency. He's self-aware to know that this may affect his judgment and his temper, but he can't say how or how much. Emotions are complicated at the best of times (he says, bitterly).
This needs to happen after normal planning, to the point of saying "we need to talk about other things first" if they push the matter. Hazō wants them aware, but he wants to minimize early double-guessing.
They should probably also establish a policy on the balance of how hard to go against any given Leaf ally, if/when they end up on different sides. Shikamaru is a rock-solid ally in and out of the tournament, and forcing him to show his hand too openly damages him going into the tournament, but vis-a-vis the central goal of strengthening Jiraiya, Hinata cannot be trusted. That'll affect tactics.
Well one way or the other, any strategy has to take into account the likelihood that Team Uplift members will be on opposite sides for these rounds. If one scores, the other loses points. There's probably some mechanism for individual point scoring, but that's going to be the basic dynamic.
Hazou, Noburi, and Keiko need to talk about how to deal with that. They need to agree in advance.
Take note of our seals, make a small handful more of {whatever has the likeliest largest increase in effective utility given separate levels of diminishing utility for various seals}
(basically, weight seals we have less of as more important to make, while also keeping in mind the base value of whatever seals we can make in this short amount of time. (Explosive Seal value == ∞, probably))
Hazou, Noburi, and Keiko all lost equal amounts of points on the intrigue event, and have been identical in points everywhere except for the swamp event where Hazou got one point more than Keiko and Noburi.
So whatever our current point total is, Hazou has exactly one more point than Keiko and Noburi, which basically means we're all equal.
This being the last event before the tournament, we want the person best able to succeed at this event to win, to maximize the odds that one of us gets to the tournament. This means Keiko, with her Pangolins, is probably our number one bet, and Hazou as a second with his killer Taijutsu.
We've finally got time to talk to Hana. Why don't we do that? She might have advice and information useful on the exam front and the political front.
Why is Keiko the one most likely to win the tournament?
Also, I've had an idea. Explosions generally work best when they propel shrapnel, not just the explosive force by itself. What if we combined a storage tag and an explosive tag to dump shrapnel out for the explosion to propel? It could probably dramatically improve range and lethality for a given explosive tag size. That means either bigger kill radiuses or much quieter explosions for the same kill radius. We could also do stuff like the equivalent of a claymore mine with shaped charges.
Her build is stronger for complicated mathy reasons that I'm too tired to go into. Also pangolins, but they're expensive chakra-wise. I'm going to suggest we spend all Kei's xp before the tournament on chakra reserves, btw.
Yeah, if we tank the exam for Keiko, it will also show that we value her (and people) for more than their skills. Actually, instead of making a plan that forces that, why don't we ask our team mates who they want to win if we do get split up? Part of Akane's beef with us is that everyone is a tool. If we want to win back her heart, let's show her she's wrong.
To the perspective of someone deep in the Frozen Skein, the fact that we tanked the exam for Keiko because she has the best chances means that we are, in fact, determining her value based on her skills. To someone like Keiko deep in the Frozen Skein, that obviously means we made a grave miscalculation because she clearly isn't good for everything.
Well, I mean, she is right though. That's the thing. We plan to take a dive for Keiko if we need to because it'd be advantageous over fighting her, not out of sentimentality. I mean, we're not even considering taking a dive for someone who's not on Team Uplift, even if they really deserve a win or something.
We'll have chances to win back Akane's heart later, after she's spent enough time on her own to figure out who she is when she's not under Hazou's shadow. The two of them can start things back up recognizing the power balance between the two and working around it instead of pretending it doesn't exist like we could when we were random genin missing-nin.
I really want to point out, mostly preemptively, that there is never anything you can do to "win back" someone's heart. You can't ever make a person like you, period. You can show them things that they'll find attractive, yeah, but as Akane said, the problem isn't that he's unlikeable.
This goes double for when the problem in a relationship is perceived as "this person is manipulative," and "you view people in terms of transactions" is basically a branch of that. You can't prove a negative, and so long as she's in that mindset every success that doesn't come from Hazō and Hazō alone is potential evidence, and motivated thinking means that it'll indeed likely be taken as evidence. (She won't want to believe she was wrong, after all.) Short of purposefully taking dives in a way she can't notice (not an option anyway), this is not a problem Hazō can solve--and that's ten times as true if Jiraiya was angling for this outcome, as we do have reason to suspect.
All of this has to happen on her end. Life is not a romantic comedy, and trying to work on romantic comedy rules is a recipe for disaster. Don't.
Yet to catch up, but my favored tactic for the event (speculative, assuming its not ruled out):
Trap our base with roughly half of All Of The Explosives
Walk with cover from our squad to other bases, heralding our arrival with Alarms/Banshees, and promptly exploding everything in our path with the other half of All Of The Explosives
Tell everyone this is our strategy, and to stay tf out of the way if they prefer not being turned into ninja giblets
We really aren't supposed to use full strength explosives in the exam. Even if we warn people ahead of time and getting killed would be stupid on their part, the risk of some idiot getting killed is too much of a risk.
We could implement the plan with training tags though.
We really aren't supposed to use full strength explosives in the exam. Even if we warn people ahead of time and getting killed would be stupid on their part, the risk of some idiot getting killed is too much of a risk.
We could implement the plan with training tags though.
Nope, not good enough. The entire plan henges on the guarantee of lethality should anyone fail to clear out of the way. This is like playing Game Theoretic Chicken, except we have a tank and the other guys don't.
