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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Omake: Proctors' POV
  • Apocrypha
    • Omake Chapter 196.2: Not Fast Enough
    ​
    "Wake up, Naka, we got orders!"

    Naka's comfortable nap against the tree was rudely interrupted by the sound and feel of proctors invading her personal space of a hundred meter radius, especially infuriating because she had just gotten her prosthetic into a comfortable position to take a short nap after all the explosives getting thrown around over at the base.

    "What is it this time?" Naka snipped, eyes stubbornly closed.

    "Mizukage's orders, warn all drain-capable contestants that draining Summons is potentially fatal!" the voice shouted, pitching higher in tone. Weird, Naka thought, wasn't Geki all about trying to not sound - what the hell is that.

    Her snapped open eyes saw Geki blasting straight past her, a chakra toad the size of a dog following him; no, a summon of the Hokage!

    Blasting off the tree, she loped up to match Geki.

    "Why the hell are we being told now?!"

    "Apparently the Hokage never thought about it until now, so now we have to go out and send the order!"


    The two arrived at the fortress, going a touch above sustainable ninja speed. More accurately, they arrived at the blenderized ruins of a concrete lean-to, a path to the sealed front door being literally pounded into the dirt for them.

    "Wow, that's a lotta damage. Think Kosuke'd wanna take notes," the toad said (and how weird was that, Naka thought).

    "You said they arrived at the station just a little bit ago?" Naka snapped off.

    "Yeah, can't've been more than half," Geki hurried out.

    "You sure?" Naka asked.

    "Well, gee, I dunno, you want me to tell you I'm lyin or somethin?" Geki huffed.

    "Yeah, but fine, I'll take your word for it," Naka said. "Anyway, we're looking for Wakahisa Kiri and Aburame Shino, yeah?"

    "Yeah, she should be just in...side..." Geki trailed off.

    It wasn't hard to figure out why, seeing all nine Blue team members bound, gagged, and in various states of straining. Notably, a certain blonde haired teenager was very much awake and swearing a muffled blue streak about lacking a barrel and implying some very scandalous things about his cousin.

    "Well, uh, looks like our job here is done, move onto the next?"


    Ruri asked herself the million myriad questions, and allowed a million variables to flow through before beginning to trim the unnecessary ones. First to go were the X-factors, forces significantly outside of her squad's power to interact. Next to go were irrelevant details about the geography and weather; all global factors could be abstracted to conditions in a colorless corridor. Within said colorless corridor, details of the base could be abstracted to wireframe, the units available to -

    Her world went distinctly grayish blue, definitely not the colors she was supposed to be seeing. The explosions confirmed that she was definitely needed, but raising an arm felt so difficult, like - shit, a restraining jutsu.

    All she could do was impotently struggle as her teammates went down with disconcerting thumps.


    Yakeyama Gansho was thankful for a few things about his bloodline. One was that the ability to release Steam with Fire and Water had managed to hold off the initial spray of red dust that had instantly incapacitated his teammates.

    What he was less thankful for was immediately getting both the boiling hot steam and red dust in his eyes the second his jutsu ended, courtesy of a Wind jutsu that had left him curled up on the ground, screaming in a very manly fashion about how his eyes literally felt on fire.

    What he was even less thankful for was realizing that the next thing he knew was being bound up, out of chakra, and kind of pressed against his teammates.

    pleasedon'tgetuppleasedon'tgetuppleasedon'tgetup-

    "I just want to make sure. You said that they checked in not thirty minutes ago?" Naka asked, leaving behind yet another group of bound, newly demoted genins.

    "When I said that, yeah, but I don't know how long it's been since then, okay? We can't all have perfect senses of times so we can nap better!" Geki replied hotly.

    "So it could've been up to an hour and thirty minutes ago," Naka asked carefully.

    "No way it took that long," Geki and Gamarei responded at once.

    "Huh? How do you know the time?" Geki sniped.

    "'Cause I'm on the clock here, buddy, and I won't be allowed to stick around for an hour anyway!" Gamarei exasperatedly replied.

    "Well then are we supposed to say that team Goketsu stomped every other squad flat in under an hour-thirty?!" Naka snapped.

    "Apparently so, and without letting the other teams so much as move before all of their heels got stabbed in the exact same way!" Geki replied.

    "That's insane, there's no way they're that good at combat!" Naka said.

    "Hell yeah there's a way, they're Clan Goketsu, the clan full of GUTS!" Gamarei bellowed.

    Naka and Geki tactfully decided not to respond to the clearly insane summon, and instead did the much saner course of action involving running towards the sounds of explosions and flashes of fire in the distance.


    Kotsuzui Kenji hadn't had to do much convincing of his whole squad to just pack up and run like hell when he said he couldn't smell anything but could definitely hear explosions; his genjutsu spec teammate wouldn't've been caught out by such a thing, they'd all already dispelled, and the noise of explosions was still getting closer. That meant there was only one team in the Exam coming for them, and that was the Goketsu; fortunately for Team Mugiwara, the win condition was to stay afloat, though dominance of the event would be a plus.

    To that end, he told his whole squad to just run away from the event and let the Goketsu run out of seals before crushing them and the Blue Team defending the base; if he got lucky, team Goketsu might just take out the Blue Team for them. His squad, quickly coming to his conclusions, left him as the last one standing in the clearing giving the explanation; next time he'd just start moving instead of getting endless teasing about being a slowpoke from Minawa Ichiro.

    And then the forest in front of them exploded in a wall of fire. Standing in front was a small pangolin.

    "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," a woman's voice echoed in his head. "As you may note, the forest in front of you is on fire. I strongly advise you not to go through with a stupid decision like running through the obviously sealmaster-rated trapped minefield, but I would understand if you prefer to be set on fire and then incapacitated rather than be incapacited immediately."

    Taichi blurred out in front to strike at the pangolin. The pangolin immediately tunneled into the ground to retreat, Taichi's blade coming within seconds of hitting her.

    "Well, that was quite rude. Never let it be said that I am a poor host, however; I've left a parting gift for you," the voice echoed.

    And then didn't, as the world screamed around him so badly his eyes shook; clapping his hands over his ears and screwing his eyes shut barely helped, and not at all when something much, much bigger than him began hogtieing him.


    "Only one team left to warn?!" Naka cried out.

    "Yep," Gamarei said, "Told you Team Goketsu could do it."

    "Whatever, let's just go there!" Geki replied.


    Team Genso never stood a chance. Mugiwara and Onoki both crumpled over in pain from an initial spray of red mist, followed by a spray of blue goop that swallowed up everyone else in the squad.

    Securing them, however, was a lot harder, especially since Shiina apparently didn't really need to sustain her bloodline; it was just an on-off switch, one not flipped by falling unconscious.

    Especially, especially when she woke up in the middle of it, the goo having dissolved a while ago. Noburi, as the guy who also was draining people, barely noticed Shiina moving, but he did notice it.

    Now he had to tie up Shiina without being able to see her, which was bound to be a massive problem.

    "Whatever, let's just go there!" a proctor yelled.

    Noburi carefully looked at his right hand, holding onto an invisible Sakamoto Shiina using Water Whip.

    "HEY! PROCTORS!"

    Noburi's face went blank.

    "Oh what's this now, kids?" Naka yelled, peering over the top.

    "It's not what it looks like! I'm just trying to bind her up!" Noburi said, face burning red.

    Hazou let his fist punch one more thing that night; his forehead.

    Some of this is bound to be wildly off character, others are invented details, and frankly it's just kinda bad, but I wanted to get it out there.
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • Oh, by the way, I meant to say: Congratulations to the people who figured out what Jiraiya was going to do. You guys are scary good at predicting things.
     
    huhYeahGoodPoint said:
    Omake Chapter 196.2: Not Fast Enough
    ​
    "Wake up, Naka, we got orders!"

    Naka's comfortable nap against the tree was rudely interrupted by the sound and feel of proctors invading her personal space of a hundred meter radius, especially infuriating because she had just gotten her prosthetic into a comfortable position to take a short nap after all the explosives getting thrown around over at the base.

    "What is it this time?" Naka snipped, eyes stubbornly closed.

    "Mizukage's orders, warn all drain-capable contestants that draining Summons is potentially fatal!" the voice shouted, pitching higher in tone. Weird, Naka thought, wasn't Geki all about trying to not sound - what the hell is that.

    Her snapped open eyes saw Geki blasting straight past her, a chakra toad the size of a dog following him; no, a summon of the Hokage!

    Blasting off the tree, she loped up to match Geki.

    "Why the hell are we being told now?!"

    "Apparently the Hokage never thought about it until now, so now we have to go out and send the order!"


    The two arrived at the fortress, going a touch above sustainable ninja speed. More accurately, they arrived at the blenderized ruins of a concrete lean-to, a path to the sealed front door being literally pounded into the dirt for them.

    "Wow, that's a lotta damage. Think Kosuke'd wanna take notes," the toad said (and how weird was that, Naka thought).

    "You said they arrived at the station just a little bit ago?" Naka snapped off.

    "Yeah, can't've been more than half," Geki hurried out.

    "You sure?" Naka asked.

    "Well, gee, I dunno, you want me to tell you I'm lyin or somethin?" Geki huffed.

    "Yeah, but fine, I'll take your word for it," Naka said. "Anyway, we're looking for Wakahisa Kiri and Aburame Shino, yeah?"

    "Yeah, she should be just in...side..." Geki trailed off.

    It wasn't hard to figure out why, seeing all nine Blue team members bound, gagged, and in various states of straining. Notably, a certain blonde haired teenager was very much awake and swearing a muffled blue streak about lacking a barrel and implying some very scandalous things about his cousin.

    "Well, uh, looks like our job here is done, move onto the next?"


    Ruri asked herself the million myriad questions, and allowed a million variables to flow through before beginning to trim the unnecessary ones. First to go were the X-factors, forces significantly outside of her squad's power to interact. Next to go were irrelevant details about the geography and weather; all global factors could be abstracted to conditions in a colorless corridor. Within said colorless corridor, details of the base could be abstracted to wireframe, the units available to -

    Her world went distinctly grayish blue, definitely not the colors she was supposed to be seeing. The explosions confirmed that she was definitely needed, but raising an arm felt so difficult, like - shit, a restraining jutsu.

    All she could do was impotently struggle as her teammates went down with disconcerting thumps.


    Yakeyama Gansho was thankful for a few things about his bloodline. One was that the ability to release Steam with Fire and Water had managed to hold off the initial spray of red dust that had instantly incapacitated his teammates.

    What he was less thankful for was immediately getting both the boiling hot steam and red dust in his eyes the second his jutsu ended, courtesy of a Wind jutsu that had left him curled up on the ground, screaming in a very manly fashion about how his eyes literally felt on fire.

    What he was even less thankful for was realizing that the next thing he knew was being bound up, out of chakra, and kind of pressed against his teammates.

    pleasedon'tgetuppleasedon'tgetuppleasedon'tgetup-

    "I just want to make sure. You said that they checked in not thirty minutes ago?" Naka asked, leaving behind yet another group of bound, newly demoted genins.

    "When I said that, yeah, but I don't know how long it's been since then, okay? We can't all have perfect senses of times so we can nap better!" Geki replied hotly.

    "So it could've been up to an hour and thirty minutes ago," Naka asked carefully.

    "No way it took that long," Geki and Gamarei responded at once.

    "Huh? How do you know the time?" Geki sniped.

    "'Cause I'm on the clock here, buddy, and I won't be allowed to stick around for an hour anyway!" Gamarei exasperatedly replied.

    "Well then are we supposed to say that team Goketsu stomped every other squad flat in under an hour-thirty?!" Naka snapped.

    "Apparently so, and without letting the other teams so much as move before all of their heels got stabbed in the exact same way!" Geki replied.

    "That's insane, there's no way they're that good at combat!" Naka said.

    "Hell yeah there's a way, they're Clan Goketsu, the clan full of GUTS!" Gamarei bellowed.

    Naka and Geki tactfully decided not to respond to the clearly insane summon, and instead did the much saner course of action involving running towards the sounds of explosions and flashes of fire in the distance.


    Kotsuzui Kenji hadn't had to do much convincing of his whole squad to just pack up and run like hell when he said he couldn't smell anything but could definitely hear explosions; his genjutsu spec teammate wouldn't've been caught out by such a thing, they'd all already dispelled, and the noise of explosions was still getting closer. That meant there was only one team in the Exam coming for them, and that was the Goketsu; fortunately for Team Mugiwara, the win condition was to stay afloat, though dominance of the event would be a plus.

    To that end, he told his whole squad to just run away from the event and let the Goketsu run out of seals before crushing them and the Blue Team defending the base; if he got lucky, team Goketsu might just take out the Blue Team for them. His squad, quickly coming to his conclusions, left him as the last one standing in the clearing giving the explanation; next time he'd just start moving instead of getting endless teasing about being a slowpoke from Minawa Ichiro.

    And then the forest in front of them exploded in a wall of fire. Standing in front was a small pangolin.

    "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," a woman's voice echoed in his head. "As you may note, the forest in front of you is on fire. I strongly advise you not to go through with a stupid decision like running through the obviously sealmaster-rated trapped minefield, but I would understand if you prefer to be set on fire and then incapacitated rather than be incapacited immediately."

    Taichi blurred out in front to strike at the pangolin. The pangolin immediately tunneled into the ground to retreat, Taichi's blade coming within seconds of hitting her.

    "Well, that was quite rude. Never let it be said that I am a poor host, however; I've left a parting gift for you," the voice echoed.

    And then didn't, as the world screamed around him so badly his eyes shook; clapping his hands over his ears and screwing his eyes shut barely helped, and not at all when something much, much bigger than him began hogtieing him.


    "Only one team left to warn?!" Naka cried out.

    "Yep," Gamarei said, "Told you Team Goketsu could do it."

    "Whatever, let's just go there!" Geki replied.


    Team Genso never stood a chance. Mugiwara and Onoki both crumpled over in pain from an initial spray of red mist, followed

    Securing them, however, was a lot harder, especially since Shiina apparently didn't really need to sustain her bloodline; it was just an on-off switch, one not flipped by falling unconscious.

    Especially, especially when she woke up in the middle of it, the goo having dissolved a while ago. Noburi, as the guy who also was draining people, barely noticed Shiina moving, but he did notice it.

    Now he had to tie up Shiina without being able to see her, which was bound to be a massive problem.

    "Whatever, let's just go there!" a proctor yelled.

    Noburi carefully looked at his right hand, holding onto an invisible Sakamoto Shiina using Water Whip.

    "HEY! PROCTORS!"

    Noburi's face went blank.

    "Oh what's this now, kids?" Naka yelled, peering over the top.

    "It's not what it looks like! I'm just trying to bind her up!" Noburi said, face burning red.

    Hazou let his fist punch one more thing that night; his forehead.

    Some of this is bound to be wildly off character, others are invented details, and frankly it's just kinda bad, but I wanted to get it out there.
    Click to expand...
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    I've mostly grown resigned to players hacking the QM docs, but I feel I have to draw the line at you posting our chapter drafts. (Also I notice you didn't fix the second sentence in the last section.)
     
    eaglejarl said:
    When Jiraiya walked back into the room, his movements were not quite right. His stride was slightly different, the way he turned and closed the door behind himself just a hair off. Few aside from the Kurosawa would have noticed, but to Ren the truth was like a scream: This was not Jiraiya.
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    For a second I had legitimately thought a lupchanz had gotten Jiraiya.
     
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    Something of interest: I've been re-reading Lighting up the Dark (thanks @Velorien! it's really good), and noticed that Sakamoto Shiina (and, in fact, her entire team) appear there as well: Chapter 21. They do not appear on the wiki, and a handful of google queries also fail to show them appearing in any primary source material.

    This is obviously wildly OOC information, so I wouldn't recommend drawing any hard conclusions from it.
     
    Solonarv said:
    Something of interest: I've been re-reading Lighting up the Dark (thanks @Velorien! it's really good), and noticed that Sakamoto Shiina (and, in fact, her entire team) appear there as well: Chapter 21. They do not appear on the wiki, and a handful of google queries also fail to show them appearing in any primary source material.

    This is obviously wildly OOC information, so I wouldn't recommend drawing any hard conclusions from it.
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    I felt sorry for her role in LUD, so when the time came to come up with a bunch of elite genin teams for the Chuunin Exam, I decided to be cheeky.

    Also, if you enjoyed the fic, I hope you look forward to the rewrite coming this autumn.
     
    OliWhail said:
    Pfft. All clan members need to repeatedly say this. It should be y'all's version of "BELIEVE IT!"
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    And so we we take another step on the path towards full shounen protagonism.

    Remember when this was supposed to be a low-key rational quest about average missing-nin surviving in a remote corner of a deathworld through guile and superior planning? Funny how that turned out.
     
    Roomba said:
    And so we we take another step on the path towards full shounen protagonism.

    Remember when this was supposed to be a low-key rational quest about average missing-nin surviving in a remote corner of a deathworld through guile and superior planning? Funny how that turned out.
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    I mean, the rational missing-nin would try to alter the setting...
     
    Roomba said:
    And so we we take another step on the path towards full shounen protagonism.

    Remember when this was supposed to be a low-key rational quest about average missing-nin surviving in a remote corner of a deathworld through guile and superior planning? Funny how that turned out.
    Click to expand...
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    We did through guile and superior planning managed to pull off a gambit on almost every stage of the exam.

    Now, we're colluding with Nara to goad our enemies into attacking us.
     
    Roomba said:
    And so we we take another step on the path towards full shounen protagonism.

    Remember when this was supposed to be a low-key rational quest about average missing-nin surviving in a remote corner of a deathworld through guile and superior planning? Funny how that turned out.
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    The mistake was giving you companions, especially Mari (though at this point I'm regretting Keiko and Noburi more, or would if Keiko wasn't awesome).
     
    Roomba said:
    And so we we take another step on the path towards full shounen protagonism.
    Click to expand...
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    A typical shonen protagonist is an idiot frequently loud and obnoxious, which I assure you Hazō is not. Neither is he book dumb. That's just his instructors surpassing his potential because they have too big egos. Nor is he oblivious to love(He even got a girlfriend!).

    He does not have a legendary father, his father being an average bog standard chunin. His mother is a former heir and a jonin, but she's not dead nor does she have a certain hair style that mark her for death.

    There is usually no dramatic flashback during a battle. There's virtually no training arcs. Granted, there's a power up button, but instead of giving Hazō more physical abilities, it just make him plan really fast and creatively, which is something that can be figured out.

    Hazō even lack a rival until now, which is Kurosawa Shin. Shin, however, is not a jerk, arrogant, or snobbish, which are typical of rivals. He does push Team Uplift to rampage through the last event. However, even the battle only made Shin and Team Downfall pushovers.

    Hazō's sensei is quite perverted, but there never seem to be any comedic retribution. Same for his adopted father. Instead they keep getting away with it.

    There is not necessary rain during an emotional moment.

    He does not eat big, or at least bigger than other ninja.

    There, these are the reasons on why this story isn't shonen.
     
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    faflec said:
    Summoning Clans don't have more than 1 summoner IIRC.
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    The Pangolin don't, at least.

    I'm not sure whether the Toads are the same, or whether the summoner has to die to sign on someone else (or if they can annul the contract at any time). Depending, we may be able to rescue Naruto by signing the contract with his blood, if Konoha has any of it on hand.
     
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