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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Noumero said:
I remember some jokes about throwing half-rotten yelling burning carcasses of megalodons at Zabuza... Can we do something like that? Have Pandamonium throw trees with attached Earbusters, Youthenizers, and clones with Goo Bombs, so that our opposition has to deal with us flinging screaming exploding trees deploying suicide goo-bombers at them?

That would be crazy awesome.
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We are planning on doing exactly that actually.
 
You know, if we made them think they were in round 2 repeatedly with genjutsu, even if they didn't actually use fate points, they probably wouldn't bother using them when they were actually in round 2 because they'd expect it to be a genjutsu too.

...I feel like we went wrong somewhere when we're considering gaslighting the competition. Oh well.
 
Cariyaga said:
You know, if we made them think they were in round 2 repeatedly with genjutsu, even if they didn't actually use fate points, they probably wouldn't bother using them when they were actually in round 2 because they'd expect it to be a genjutsu too.

...I feel like we went wrong somewhere when we're considering gaslighting the competition. Oh well.
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I think our Genjutsu skill has to be a bit higher to fake a 2-day hallucination. Like, Jonin-level.
 
faflec said:
I think our Genjutsu skill has to be a bit higher to fake a 2-day hallucination. Like, Jonin-level.
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We can ask. Failing that, if it's necessary, Gomi can inflict mental consequences with it np.

e: Also it wouldn't be a 2-day hallucination. We just need to simulate them waking up and going to the next event.
 
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Interlude: In Which Hazō Ruins His Sister’s Hopes and Dreams
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    • The past month had been the most peaceful Kei had ever known. Akatsuki's diabolical plot to evenly divide chakra reserves across the whole of humanity had been foiled. The Hokage and the Mizukage were world-class heroes, their rule nigh-unshakeable for the time being. Naruto was undergoing rehabilitation at Leaf General Hospital, and after a solid political defeat Yagura was using the Three-Tails's power to fulfil a childhood dream and learn what lay beyond the horizon. If there was one element missing that would complete this ideal scenario, it was…

    "Hey, runt! What happened to meeting your beloved older sister at the village gate?"

    Keiko dropped the freshly-bought books she had been carrying. "Ami?"

    "Huh," the most important person in Kei's life said. "I guess the Hokage must have wanted to make it a surprise."

    "Ami?" Kei repeated uncertainly. "I thought you were…?"

    "Eh," Ami shrugged. "So you betrayed the clan once. Leaf's not our enemy anymore, and after seeing how happy you were when you took first place in the tournament, I'm starting to think maybe this really is where you belong."

    "You mean…?"

    "Yeah. Sorry, that was the wrong way round." Ami paused. I'm sorry, Keiko," she said seriously. "I let you down as your sister… and as your friend. Can you forgive me?"

    It was surreal. Impossible. Unimaginable. A daydream so far beyond the outer reaches of probability that Kei hadn't even bothered to prepare a reply.

    Instead, after a few seconds of stunned silence, she presented her response in the form of a high-speed tackle-hug. And this time… it was perfect.

    -o-​

    "I am Mori Ami," Ami said, bowing deeply before the dinner table. "It is an honour to meet you, Lord Hokage, Lady Gōketsu, and the rest of Keiko's family."

    Jiraiya gave a nod. "It's good to meet you too, Mori." He gave her a considering look. "Heck, you're family of a sort, in a twisty, windy way, so in private, you can just go with 'Jiraiya'."

    "Mari," Mari-sensei smiled. "If you want to be technical, I'm not actually Lady Gōketsu until we get married."

    Jiraiya shivered inexplicably. "Which is a thing that will be happening any day now, the instant I finalise the arrangements, and of course you'll be invited."

    "Ami, allow me to introduce the rest of my family," Kei said. "These are my brothers. Noburi…"

    "Hi there. We've heard a lot about you."

    "Hazō."

    "…"

    "Hazō."

    "Oh. Um. Hi. Pleased to meet you."

    There was a dazed look in Hazō's eyes which sent chills down Kei's spine. It occurred to her that Ami happened to be a playful, energetic and self-possessed older girl, and thus in the dead centre of Hazō's strike zone. Then again, she was far too sensible to ever find the likes of him attractive, and perhaps it was only fair that he join Kei and Noburi in the experience of suffering through a hopelessly unattainable crush.

    "And our uncle, Kagome," she finished.

    Kagome gave Ami a baleful stare.

    "You hurt a member of my family. Don't think I've forgotten."

    Ami bowed to him. "I am sorry. I've learned from my mistake. Thank you for looking out for Keiko all this time."

    Kagome gave a surprised grunt. "Hmph. Well, just remember I've got my eye on you."

    "I will."

    An awkward silence ensued, but naturally Mari-sensei did not allow it to last for long.

    "So Ami," she said, "how did you end up being Mist's special liaison to the Hokage? I wouldn't have thought your clan head would let her newly-appointed heir out of the village so soon."

    Ami smirked. "She wasn't going to. I had to remind her exactly who soloed Uchiha Itachi at the Great Battle of Hidden Mountain, and ask how much capital she was willing to burn to overrule the clan's new hero."

    Jiraiya winced.

    "Speaking of," Ami said, "I've been looking forward to meeting the genius who made that victory possible. Hazō, I understand you're the one who erased Akatsuki's air superiority with a single seal."

    "Oh," Hazō blushed. "No, that was just the original design. It was Kagome-sensei that created the prototypes. On my own, I wouldn't have been able to—"

    Noburi gave a loud cough which sounded remarkably like "OPSEC".

    Ami laughed. "Don't worry. We've already got a sealing lab trying to reverse-engineer the design, and I'm not here to make their job easier for them. I just wanted to pick your brain about general principles of sealing creativity. Sealcrafting's on my list, but it takes forever to get competent and I don't want to disrespect the art by giving it anything less than my full attention."

    Hazō's eyes lit up with an unhealthy glow. "You're interested in sealcrafting?"

    "Sure. Storage seals revolutionised shinobi warfare and save dozens of lives every day. Explosive tags revolutionised shinobi warfare and save dozens of lives every day. Doesn't it seem weird to you that nearly every ninja stops at those two seals instead of asking what else there is that could turn their little corner of the world upside down?"

    Hazō grinned. "I know exactly what you mean. Did you ever hear the details of how we won the Fourth Event?"

    -o-​

    In the following days, Ami and Hazō spent increasing amounts of time together. Kei would not have cared, save for the fact that it prevented her from monopolising Ami's time (which, yes, was a pathological instinct that would surely cause problems somewhere down the line, but on the other hand, Ami). This morning was but one more frustrating occasion, as she descended the stairs to the kitchen only to find it already occupied. She stopped, uncertain whether to enter.

    "That's a common misapprehension," Hazō insisted in a voice much too loud for this time of morning. "On page 22 of Chapter 20, the Fourth Mizukage makes it quite clear that delaying… relations… until the third date is not a suggestion for the sake of social propriety. It's because if your date is a foreign agent and they've gone to this much trouble, it's likely that they're trying to cultivate you as an asset, so odds are they won't try to assassinate you the second you're in bed together."

    "Hold up," Ami said. "That contradicts page 14, where he says you should make sure your first few dates are held in public places. If a foreign agent does want to assassinate you, that third date will be their first opportunity."

    "No contradiction at all," Hazō said triumphantly. "You see, that links all the way back to the Fourth Foundation of Courtship: 'Remember that Hidden Mist is always watching'. You spend your first few dates in public so that the Mizukage's secret police will take note of whom you're dating, and whom to blame in the event of your sudden death. And if you do get assassinated the first time you're in bed with someone, clearly you deserved to die for letting your guard down, and you've still performed a valuable public service by exposing a traitor."

    Ami nodded thoughtfully. "That… actually makes a lot of sense. Not as a guide, because the whole thing is irrational and prescriptive to the point of insanity, but in terms of what Yagura must have been thinking when he wrote it. Nice going, Hazō."

    "I'm surprised you know My Vision as well as you do, Ami," Hazō said. "It's usually troublemakers like me that end up having an encyclopaedic knowledge of it, not goddesses of learning like you. I mean, when I was at the Academy, there was talk of putting up pictures of you in the classrooms as a moral exemplar, just under the Mizukage icons."

    "Flatterer!" Ami laughed, slapping him lightly on the arm. Though Ami appeared to be enjoying herself, the gesture of mild rejection made Kei feel a little better about the situation.

    "I'm only a model student retroactively," she explained with a grin. "The real Ami was a bad girl through and through. I mean, from day one you find yourself walled in by all these rules and boundaries. Some of them are sensible, like taking care of the books and not fighting in classrooms, but others are total bullshit that make everything slow and boring, and there's no way to tell if there is any deeper reason for those rules because no teacher is going to justify the educational system to a child. So I spent my time at the Academy doing two things: learning how to learn the way that best fit me and learning how not to get caught doing it, both of them through trial and error. And also pulling a bunch of crazy shit so I'd have cool stories to bring home to Keiko. If you ever heard about the Giant Erotic Woodcuts Incident, that was all me."

    "You were responsible for the Giant Erotic Woodcuts Incident?!"

    Kei's facepalm was loud enough to echo through the building.

    "Oh, 'morning, runt," Ami beamed as Kei cursed her own ineptitude at stealth, self-control and also everything else ever. "Want to join the Nostalgia Crew for breakfast?"

    -o-​

    The final sign of the apocalypse, when it came, was subtle enough that you could have missed it—and also, like most things, Kei's own stupid fault.

    "Say, Hazō," Ami said apropos of nothing one fine morning, "Keiko's been telling me about that date with Shikamaru you arranged for her."

    Naturally, after a month in Leaf, Ami was already on closer terms with her fiancé than she was.

    "It was not a date," Kei said wearily. "It was an instance of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship."

    "That," Hazō agreed. "More to the point, it was a trial, a carefully-designed test to make sure they were properly compatible as a couple. Any romance was entirely coincidental."

    "Mm-hmm. Well, it's made me curious about your design and optimisation abilities," Ami said with a twinkle in her eye. "Why don't you whip up another trial like that for tomorrow… for you and me?"

    "Sure," Hazō said. "But don't you have that informal meeting with the Inuzuka tomorrow?"

    "Exactly. If they see me skipping it to gallivant around town with a boy, after all those successful sessions we've been having, it'll send them horrifyingly mixed signals about our relationship. I've been keeping Shinrō and Kenji carefully off-balance, and since they're both classic Inuzuka elders, they're terrible at coping with the grey areas of human communication. A nudge here, a nudge there, and before long they'll flip to submissive just so they can have a defined place in the pecking order."

    "Oh. In that case, have you ever heard of the Yabai Café?"

    -o-​

    "Kagome," Kei said patiently over the dinner table, "while I generally bow to your superior expertise in regard to the hidden secrets of the shinobi world, I can tell you with confidence that the reason why Cloud has not made the full details of its command structure public is not because the names of its leadership arranged by date of entry into office spell out the secret true name of the Sage of Six Paths by which alone he may be destroyed." (Spurred by boredom, she had consulted a series of Leaf records, and made the necessary logical deductions, but abandoned the endeavour as absurd by the time she reached "NYARL".)

    Kagome seethed in an effort to find an effective rejoinder (he would not), and Kei took the opportunity to reach for more of her grilled chicken.

    "Ami," Jiraiya asked casually, "did you see that missive from Mori Biwako?"

    For some reason, Ami rose from her seat at the question. "I did, sir. It seems the final preparations are complete."

    Kei felt a sense of impending doom at those words, as she usually did when they were uttered by Kagome or Hazō.

    "Lord Gōketsu, Lady Gōketsu," Ami bowed, "I humbly ask for your permission to formally court your son Hazō."

    There was a dull thunk as Kei's chopsticks penetrated to the underside of the table.

    "Permission granted," Jiraiya said. "It's not like we didn't see this one coming, and even with your clan head's demands…"

    There was something else, about dowries and children, but Kei could not hear a word of it over the loud high-pitched noise in the distance.

    -o-​

    Hazō jerked awake in blind panic, but calmed quickly as he recognised the noise not as an alarm or the beginning of an assault, but merely Keiko waking up screaming from a nightmare.

    He glanced towards her, expecting to encounter the usual "I don't want to talk about it" glare. Instead, Keiko was up. Up and moving towards him. Up and moving towards him with an expression straight out of his own nightmares.

    "Please stay still, Hazō. As a compromise, I will endeavour to end it swiftly and with a minimum of pain."

    "K-Keiko?!"

    It was only his hard-earned missing-nin survival instinct that got him out of the way in time.

    -o-​

    The team stared wordlessly at the proctor. The proctor stared wordlessly at the team.

    Hazō, half-naked with vivid scratches on his back from when Noburi's Water Whip made Keiko lose her balance.

    Noburi, equally half-naked, caught in the middle of gathering scattered scrolls, a macerator half-open in his hand with the kanji for "wood" clearly visible.

    And contextualising both, Keiko, not half-naked by virtue of being a girl, but scantily clad and securely tied and gagged on top of the middle bed. Her expression at this point was not one of fear or anger, but more of a resigned "not again".

    "What the hell," the proctor finally said. "It's not against the rules."

    -o-​

    You have received 0 XP and 0 FP.

    The proctor has received one Thousand Yard Stare point.

    In the morning, the Team Gōketsu mythos will expand once more.

    -o-​

    There will be no voting.
     
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    • Cariyaga said:
    You know, if we made them think they were in round 2 repeatedly with genjutsu, even if they didn't actually use fate points, they probably wouldn't bother using them when they were actually in round 2 because they'd expect it to be a genjutsu too.

    ...I feel like we went wrong somewhere when we're considering gaslighting the competition. Oh well.
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    If Gomi can pull off some Tsukiyomi level illusion stuff like that Id be very surprised.

    They might need to burn FP depending on what kind of genjutsu he uses though. If he has them dodging invisible opponents that might work.

    Also yay update!
     
    Velorien said:
    The team stared wordlessly at the proctor. The proctor stared wordlessly at the team.

    Hazō, half-naked with vivid scratches on his back from when Noburi's Water Whip made Keiko lose her balance.

    Noburi, equally half-naked, caught in the middle of gathering scattered scrolls, a macerator half-open in his hand with the kanji for "wood" clearly visible.

    And contextualising both, Keiko, not half-naked by virtue of being a girl, but scantily clad and securely tied and gagged on top of the middle bed. Her expression at this point was not one of fear or anger, but more of a resigned "not again".

    "What the hell," the proctor finally said. "It's not against the rules."
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    ...so when in the timeline is this?
     
    When you inadvertantly create some random 50 Shades of Gray Icha Icha scene and the proctor needs to figure out if its allowed.
     
    Velorien said:
    The proctor has received one Thousand Yard Stare point.
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    Quick, everyone vote for Keiko to have nightmares. We can retroactively traumatize all proctors, all competitors, everyone we want to.

    [x] Keiko has a Nightmare: Akatsuki tries to set Hazou up with Ami
    [x] Keiko has a Nightmare: Tsuchikage wants to adopt Pandaa
    [x] Keiko has a Nightmare: The Sage wants to tutor Tenten in sealing
     
    Velorien said:
    NYARL
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    Interesting factlet: the son of Azathoth is technically named "Nyarlat". The name "Nyarlathotep" was constructed from the ancient egyptians adding "-hotep" to his name for cultural reasons.

    We also know Kumo has a ninja called "F". That implies that something similar happened in the mfd-verse. Maybe Nyarlat was at some point promoted to a squad lieutenant, thereby earning the title "Nyarlat-fukutaicho"?
     
    MadScientist said:
    Interesting factlet: the son of Azathoth is technically named "Nyarlat". The name "Nyarlathotep" was constructed from the ancient egyptians adding "-hotep" to his name for cultural reasons.

    We also know Kumo has a ninja called "F". That implies that something similar happened in the mfd-verse. Maybe Nyarlat was at some point promoted to a squad lieutenant, thereby earning the title "Nyarlat-fukutaicho"?
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    TINACBNIEAC
     
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