- Location
- Yes.
but my incredibly complex but impractical loopholes
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
- Location
- Yes.
So...how far did our team travel? 5 miles? 4? 6?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Probably about 4, but you weren't exactly dragging a measuring tape.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
No but seriously.but my incredibly complex but impractical loopholes
It's far more likely we could bribe 1-2 of the minor village guys to throw next round if they're not on our team than any of this complicated exploit injuries nonsense (beyond what we already planned) or finding some way to do this sabotage externally and fooling the proctors.
Example:
We could promise Kato a shipment of explosives and utility seals for Sky purchased through Mist Yakuza as an intermediary, like six months from now. We can churn these out like fucking candy, so spending half an hour a day on such menial labor is hardly a major opportunity cost for us.
In return he will trap the hell out of his Round 2 Blue Bass, destroy the documents, destroy the key, remove them or whatever works.
But if they get like, a crate worth of explosive tags and utility seals (think Usamatsu or LBF/alarm seals or earth dimes or something) then that's a far better deal for their tiny ass village than merely advancing to the finals.
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- Location
- Yes.
Alright, that gives us a reasonable direction with which to work with. Since we know the facility is 5 miles from the east gate, and we traveled 4 miles, we should start our search by moving (generally) away from the direction of the East gate.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
We haven't necessarily traveled 4 miles in any given direction. We could've looped back in on ourselves for 3 miles.
What does everyone think of trying to buy one of the deceit guys out?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's also a safe bet that the proctor will give you a general direction to the target and to the proctor station. To do otherwise risks you hitting the wrong facility or not being able to get medical help when you need it.
- Location
- Yes.
We'd know if we'd looped around ourselves for 3 miles.
Oh, sweet. *wonders if proctor will give us this information right now*
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That would be helpful. Therefore, no.
- Location
- Potato land
I think it can wait until the next plan. Depending on how we decide to play things during the break, it may become more or less profitable to do it.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Fair. To the punch mobile!
- Location
- Yes.
Kagome: It's the EXPLODINGMOBILE YOU– *boom*
Chapter 195: White Lies
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 195: White Lies
Mori Keiko was not one of nature's social butterflies. If she were to make use of any tortured animal kingdom metaphor, she would be more of a moth, by nature suited to the darkness outside the realm of normal social interaction, observing silently from liminal spaces and occasionally being tempted into the light only to be burned. Nevertheless, she had over time learned to withstand the harsh glare of others' expectations, and it was a popular belief (that is, one shared by up to six people in the entire world) that Mari-sensei deserved the credit for her ability to interact usefully outside her narrow social circle.
They were not wrong, but neither were they right. As usual, their error had been to overestimate her, to assume that such social skills as she had possessed before Mari-sensei's intervention were evidence of some natural ability. They were not.
To Kei as she remembered herself from her earliest memories, it had been bemusing that other people possessed an intuitive understanding of what others felt and how they would respond to words. One would speak, and the other would nod, or frown, or give one of a number of indistinguishable smiles, and somehow between that and their tone of voice, communication was accomplished. This even though what they were saying was vastly insufficient in informational content to generate the observed results (whatever young Kei's intellectual deficiencies, a poor vocabulary had not been among them).
It was not that the Mori Clan did not provide any social training. The Frozen Skein being what it was, it was not unknown for Kei's fellow clansmen to become lost within themselves, forgetting amidst the fading echoes of crystalline clarity that communication worked on several different levels—simply put, forgetting to translate. But to translate, one first had to speak both languages, and it did not occur to anyone that either needed to be taught. Kei was a native speaker of the Mori language, having absorbed from her parents the art of accurate, carefully crafted self-expression on the intellectual level. Even then, it was a language unsuited to expressions of emotion, and her monoglot attempts to use it for that purpose often led her to verge on the verbose.
But while that did suffice to make her come across as pompous and intellectually conceited, this was by far the lesser problem. The greater problem was the other language, which was never taught (outside nebulous infiltration training unavailable to a mere child) and yet which everyone expected her to understand. She had had some limited success with rote learning combined with trial and error, noting which tones and expressions seemed to match which mental states and memorising them using her admittedly superior powers of recall. But from an outside perspective, she was essentially poking people in order to see what happened, and this did not endear the sullen and unfriendly child to anybody.
It was, naturally, Ami who had saved her. Ami, herself not yet even a genin, who had approached her with a sufficient lack of preconceptions to realise that, rather than being stupid, anti-social or lazy, Kei was merely struggling with a massive handicap. It was, naturally, Ami who had been the source of a life-changing insight: even if you could not learn all of humanity, you could learn a person.
Kei devoted herself to studying her genius sister, learning all the thousand gradations of her smile, all her moods and the motions generated by each. To read her sister like a book, even though that book was largely written in a foreign language. To predict what effects different forms of behaviour would have upon her, driven by a simple desire to make Ami happy that proved more motivating than any number of practical objectives. On her part, Ami showed Kei an openness that was for her alone, explaining in plain speech the thoughts and feelings that drove her to behave the way she did, lowering the veils of implication, innuendo and subtle manipulation that were allegedly the key to social success, offering feedback which no other person in this world would know to give. Despite Kei's general inability as a student, and the inherent difficulty of extrapolating general rules from such a narrow field of study, it could be said with only limited exaggeration that Ami had taught Kei how to be human.
The general import of which self-indulgent reflection was that Kei's limitations when it came to interpreting non-verbal signals were likely the greatest of any human being ever born, so much so that the efforts of two superlative masters of the social arts had rendered her able to pass for borderline competent at best. Thus, when even she was able to tell, without contextual clues, that a ninja with deception training was concealing profound misery, she took it as a certain sign of the apocalypse.
"Noburi! Code Killbox!" she shouted down the corridor as Hazō stumbled into their room. She could not hear Noburi's urgent apology to his latest conversation partner, but on the whole he reacted with appropriate haste, arriving before Hazō could so much as finish collapsing onto his bed.
"Code Killbox?" Hazō asked apathetically.
"Noburi and I were discussing the need for private codes not inspired by the structures of Leaf or Mist military systems, and thus not open to being decoded by same. In this instance, I have alerted Noburi to the sudden development of a non-combat crisis situation which requires 'all hands on deck' without delay." Kei refrained from providing the full definition of the code, which was "Hazō has done something unimaginably stupid again—drop everything, find out what he did and run the necessary damage control".
"Oh. Well, there's no crisis," Hazō said as he attempted to sink into the bed until it fully swallowed him. "Just life being the way it always is."
"Hazō," Noburi said impatiently, "you look worse than that time Kagome set your temporal mastery seal proposal on fire without reading it."
"Worse than the time we banned you from using lists."
"Worse than the time you opened the sealed door on sub-level 3 of the Gōketsu Compound."
"Worse than when you had that nightmare about an enemy ninja alliance converging on our fort."
"Point taken," Hazō grumbled lifelessly. "Anyway, it's nothing important."
Kei gave him a pointed look. "Hazō, as your friend I wish to support you in every way possible when you appear to be in distress. As your teammate I wish to assist you in addressing an issue which seems likely to impair your performance during the many challenges we will soon face. As a person with experience of life with Team Uplift, I wish to fix whatever has happened to you before some unpredictable factor escalates the problem to the doom of us all."
"It's Akane," Hazō muttered after a second. "I think we just had a fight."
Of course it would be Akane. Under the circumstances, Kei was embarrassed at herself for failing to predict as much. Still, at least that should make it a relatively minor matter. Hazō and Akane's relationship was smoother than an ideal horizontal plane and saccharine enough to inflict terminal diabetes at range, and certainly cliché to the point where only a fool would ever feel jealous of it. All that was called for was temporary reassurance.
"While Akane may be unreasonably biased in her interpretation of the nature of the world around her, and frequently unable to comprehend other people's feelings and respond appropriately, I am inclined to believe that she does not fundamentally mean any harm. It may be natural for you to feel anxious in the immediate aftermath, but I am certain that the matter will resolve itself in due course."
"Unable to comprehend other people's feelings?" Hazō echoed incredulously.
"Indeed. She acts as if unaware that I find her relentless optimism grating, and that her persistent proselytism of the so-called Spirit of Youth is borderline offensive to anyone with a more realistic and, frankly, more nuanced outlook on life."
"I don't think that's fair—"
"Hazō," Noburi said firmly. "Let's not get sidetracked. If you tell us what happened, maybe we can help, or at least find a way to make you feel better. This is a really bad time for conflict with other Leaf ninja, never mind people we personally care about."
Hazō stared at the ceiling with a hollow gaze. "It's not a big deal. We'll make up later, once she's had time to calm down. I'm sure of it. That's how these things work." He paused. " Don't they?"
"Don't look at me," Noburi said. "The last time I had a fight with a girl I was sort-of dating, which was also the only time, she ended up hating me forever. Which, come to think of it, probably doesn't make you feel better. Sorry."
"Regardless, the objective implications of Akane's reprehensible behaviour have little bearing on your immediate emotional response. I may be the last person to have the right to say this, but I encourage you not to repress your feelings."
"Thanks, Keiko." Hazō levered himself up into a sitting position. "I just… went to tell her I was sorry about breaking OPSEC with Nara and the others. That's all."
Kei nodded in general approval. Love was a terrible motivation for learning to maintain OPSEC, but at this point she would take whatever she could get.
"That seems pretty straightforward," Noburi said. "How'd you manage to mess it up?"
Hazō made a truly pitiful attempt to glare daggers at him.
"Apparently, it wasn't the OPSEC thing she was mad about."
Noburi frowned briefly in incomprehension.
"What does that leave? I'm pretty sure you didn't break any of Keiko's promises, and Akane scoring low didn't have anything to do with you either. Is this a girl thing?"
"A girl thing." Kei's words did not merely drip with venom as an amateur's might. Rather, those few words were filled with such a lethal concentration of disgust that through the mere expedient of entering his ears it should have reduced the boy to the puddle of worthless slime that he truly was.
"SoanywaywhathappenedHazō?"
"I don't really know," Hazō said. "Was it an agency thing? She wasn't happy that I acted like I had the right to tell her what to do. She said some things I didn't really understand about me seeing people as tools and her not wanting to live her life as an extension of mine." His voice tightened. "Which is nothing like the way I've treated her!"
Kei exchanged an uncomfortable look with Noburi. The dilemma was obvious. For once in her life, Kei could fully understand and appreciate Akane's perspective. For all of Hazō's virtues, he did have a conspicuous pattern of disrespecting other people's agency, such as assuming that Kei was incapable of acting and making decisions on her own initiative merely because her bloodline rendered her incapable of acting and making decisions on her own initiative. It was a gross oversimplification of a complex and sensitive issue, as often tended to occur when the already entangled and incomprehensible subtleties of human life were reduced to concise lists and plans. His flaws would be amplified for Akane, whose inferior political status forced her into a position of vulnerability, potentially even subservience, before her romantic partner.
At the same time, explicitly siding with Akane in a way that increased Hazō's misery would be counterproductive to the stated objective of supporting him in the immediate term, to the point of potentially endangering their lives during the next event. Kei looked more closely at Hazō's face. He was another person she had learned—not on the same level as Ami, but enough to recognize certain patterns that even a normal human being might miss if they lacked her depth of acquaintance with him. And if, behind his façade of general social incompetence, he was in as much pain as she believed… Snow Country would be black next to the whiteness of this lie.
"I believe this is a natural misunderstanding," Kei said carefully. "It should be clear to anyone who knows you as well as she or I that your often insulting clumsiness in gaining the cooperation of your allies is merely that, without any underlying issues that could in the long term undermine your interpersonal relationships. Akane possesses sufficient powers of judgement to eventually realise her mistake, whereupon reconciliation shall surely follow."
Noburi bit his lip. It was, she was fairly confident, an expression of scepticism. Or possibly simple stress. Or perhaps preparation to say or do something he was not comfortable with. Or an indicator of concentration. Or a physical sublimation of emotional pain. She hated body language for its sheer number of synonyms.
"…yeah," Noburi said finally. "Keiko's right. This kind of thing is supposed to happen when you're in a relationship. It's probably perfectly normal. Akane wouldn't break up with someone that easily."
Hazō froze. "Break up?" He asked in an agonised mixture of shock, horror and pleading. "Who said anything about breaking up?"
Apparently, today Kei was the sensitive, diplomatic member of the team. How many signs did one receive before the full apocalypse?
"Uh, poor choice of words. What I meant to say is that no matter what it sounds like… Akane loves you, so I'm sure she won't do anything extreme."
"Extreme? What would she do that's extreme?" Hazō's hands were tightening on the bedsheets.
Would it be possible to complete the rest of the Chūnin Exam without Noburi? No, perhaps she should exercise some self-control and instead go torment Hyūga to relieve her frustration once this situation was resolved.
"You know what?" Noburi said with what was almost certainly a fake smile (not that she could be certain from visual cues alone). "Maybe this is a bad time to be talking about it. You're fresh from your fight with Akane, and the last thing you need is to be dwelling on things. What we should do is focus on something positive, like how we're going to utterly annihilate our competition, win the event and get Jiraiya an enormous negotiations advantage."
"Yeah," Hazō said vaguely. "That is definitely a thing we can do." But he did not let go of the sheets.
Kei watched with forlorn hope for that twinkle in Hazō's eye that invariably preceded a new proposal for bringing peace and mutual understanding to the world through the deployment of new weapons of mass destruction. It did not come.
Perhaps for the first time in her life, Kei regretted having insight into another person's heart.
-o-
Voting ends on Saturday 14th of July, 9 am New York time.
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
That was a bit touching overall actually, as far as my cold black heart is concerned.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Absolutely none, you say? Hmm, interesting.
Pfffft. Welcome back. I assume things worked out for you?
This is an excellent idea. 3 hours is a bit of an ask, but you would be surprised at the ideas 3 smart people can come up with when spending 15-minutes by-the-clock with a goal in mind, especially after being given permission to think unorthodoxly. (Sounds silly, but it's true.)
Also, rather than election, I suggest a lottery. Everyone interested in contributing would state so ahead of time (on a per-cycle basis), then should they be selected, commit to spending at least 15 mins doing their best to unbiasedly find failure modes, points of weakness, and ways in which others can hamper our plans.
To be useful, the determination would have to be done sometime between when we have clear frontrunners for plans and about a day or so before voting closes. For more important or sensitive plans, or when there are just multiple plans, we can select more than one person.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
So somewhere between 36-12 hours before the deadline. Our QMs are predictable with the update schedule so this works.
This sounds like a nice idea, actually. Lottery pool on a case by case basis would work out.
- Location
- Denmark
Given timezones, I would say that it the findings should, preferably, be given at least 24 hours prior to the deadline.
But I'd be up for failure-checking duty. I've lurked for quite a while now, so now that I have the time, it'd be nice to contribute to the planning!
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I will note that resource-wise we bury Shin under a thousand notebooks of seals, so we are likely the higher bidder.
Also will be back with edit suggestions to your plan later by the by.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
And coincidentally his clan head has reason to favor us over him, so he won't be able to get too many extra seals there...
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hey! @Dissonance, you tricked me! I should have paid closer attention to the username instead of only the content.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Man, I wish quotes stacked like that naturally instead of having to contort the forum to do it.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
We all knew Ami was basically a Mary Sue that eclipsed Hazo but now she has done it. She invented CCnJ before us?!
Ami has to join us or die.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Starting a list for Mad-Eye Lottery. I'll select one person randomly for each meaningfully different plan candidate sometime early Friday afternoon. Ping me to be added.
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- Location
- Yes.
Know us it'll probably be both. Not necessarily in that order.