Looks like I got ninja'd by
@Nejiranu, but I'll post this anyway since it was already written up:
In GM chat it has been noted rather pointedly that I should not dispense OOC information. I will, however, make a couple of points about *in-character* information that Hazō has but is less visible to the players. I mention this because not remembering it could distort your perceptions.
1) In the real world it was a few days between when you told Jiraiya and when Minami died. In-universe it was weeks.
2) At pretty much every delivery site, someone asked you to do something. Most of those didn't get mentioned onscreen because they were boring, but every civilian has some problem that could be easily solved by ninja: "Could you kill the chakra leopard that's been stalking my farm? Could you knock down that massive tree that's right in the middle of the field I want to plow? Could you....?"
3) Some clarifications about your points from above:
Fact: The enemy got an ambush round and used it on an AOE DOT effect that probably would have taken the entire group down in a couple rounds. All she needed to do was turtle up and wait.
Fact: In the first round, the enemy (let's call her Alice) used her combat action casting a defensive buff (Hōzuki's Mantle). If Minami hadn't attacked she wouldn't have died, because Alice had no actions left.
Fact: Before Alice got another turn the two of you were under an Air Dome and had pulled out a dozen seals that (a) she wasn't familiar with and (b) appeared to cancel out the AOE jutsu that she was counting on to take you down, but did so in a way that she couldn't identify.
Fact: Alice tested the barrier to see how tough it seemed, then promptly departed.
Fact: Jiraiya said that the reason he wanted you to stay on the ground was because he thought foreign intelligence services would be stirred up since you guys went tearing out of Ise in such a hurry. (He agreed it was the right thing to do, but that doesn't mean it didn't have consequences.)
Fact: After hearing what happened re Minami's death, Jiraiya said that apparently the entire eastern side of his network was compromised and therefore could not be trusted, so there was no point in delivering the messages.
Fact: He told you to use the skywalkers, but he said to (a) go up above cloud level as fast as possible and (b) do not come below cloud level until you were back at Leaf.
Okay, I have to ask -- what would you have said in his place? Imagine that you're the brand-new father figure to a bunch of kids, as well as their military commander, and they just lost a teammate for the first time. Now imagine that they lost that teammate because
you screwed up and let your spy network get compromised. Would you tell them "Well, you guys really screwed the pooch. Nice job breaking it", or would you say "this wasn't your fault"?
Point of clarification: "infiltration spec" means spy. Someone who sneaks in, steals stuff, schmoozes information out of people, etc. If they lived long enough to become jōnin then they can probably kick some ass in a fight, but an infiltration spec is never going to be a Gai.
Fact: The way the multicombatant rules work, anyone who wants to be a solo fighter (like, for example, Gai) needs to put some thought into what they're going to do against groups.
Fact: The woman you fought demonstrated two jutsu and one skill that you saw: (a) Hōzuki's Mantle, which is a combat jutsu designed to let one person fight multiple opponents, (b) Eternal Lullaby, a technique designed to incapacitate large numbers of opponents, and (c) crushingly high Melee Weapons skill. She seemed to be very good at all of these things, which implies a high degree of investment in three combat-only skills.
As
@Kiba said, confirmation bias is a thing. Try steelmanning the opposite position: "Resolved: Jiraiya did not kill Minami or order her killed." I suspect that, if you really make the effort, you will find it just as easy to support that position as to support the one where Jiraiya goes blue-on-blue.
Oh, there's not the slightest doubt that Jiraiya would kill for OPSEC -- he as much as told you that already. Expecting him to kill
Leaf ninja who are standing next to his kids is a rather different story, though.
You should both get accounts on FFN or AO3 and publish. Then link it to /r/rational and ping me here to make sure I see it; I'll leave you your first review.
Seriously -- reply to this message with a date by which you commit to publish something and then do it. Choose a nearby date too, like Sunday night. It only has to be a few hundred words, but do it. It's an amazing feeling to put something up for the first time, and there's no way to improve as a writer except to write and write a lot.
Welcome to our world. Ugh.
. I will note though that the Evilest QM seems to be pretty busy with IRL stuff of late.
