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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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huhYeahGoodPoint said:
...

Alright, so some bits worked, other bits didn't, and apparently break-up fellings are casting a pall on our XP growth. Tragic.

In other news, Jiraiya has a huge lead. This means we should probably be proactive in making fuck-tons of skywalker blanks, because he's probably going to need them soon; either he's going to need to travel a large distance or bring a lot of the remaining high-rankers with him, possibly both, so we should dedicate some time to making hundreds to thousands of skywalker blanks; Exam prep is comparitively less important.
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Agreed.
 
Also I like the floor-is-lava as a neat quirk to work into Hazō, like Guy's YOUTH or Kakashi's..... Kakashi-ness.
 
[X] Eventually, send small but nice gifts to Lee and Yamanaka as apologies for making them deal with Hazō's emotional issues
 
So I've been sticking to the story-only for more than a year, but I felt compelled to come back just for this:
You can say that Jiraya is a clever and competent ruler all you want, but you'll never convince me that he didn't just risk a huge international incident for the sake of making Hazo feel better.

Oh, and we definitely should apologize to all those people Hazo went and annoyed because he'd been dumped by his girlfriend.
 
eaglejarl said:
(For values of 'thing' that ranged from fruit to an origami paper box with a Five-Seal-Barrier on it to a freshly-killed squirrel carcass. (Hazō had briefly speculated, with a certain dark and sullen intensity, about trying it with a live squirrel, but decided that Akane wouldn't have approved and that FutureHazō probably wouldn't either.))
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Hm. Hazou is thinking in nested parentheticals. He might be a bit worse for wear than I thought...

eaglejarl said:
The sun was only halfway up the sky when Jiraiya arrived. The Hokage wasn't sprinting, but he wasn't dawdling either.

"Everyone go get your skywalkers," he said with no preamble. "I need all of them. Kagome, don't screw around. I'll help you make more, but I need everything you've got. Noburi, you stay."

Hazō glanced at his brother in surprise. Noburi shrugged back.

"Move!" Jiraiya snapped.

The clan moved.
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OH SHIT

Fuck. It's Akatsuki, isn't it?

---

...Hm. Just Noburi. Most interesting.

eaglejarl said:
Hazō glared after his Clan Head and adopted brother. Wasn't it just typical that no one bothered to tell him anything? It wasn't like he hadn't proven himself to have useful ideas. He was the one who had invented skywalkers and skytowers, thereby transforming warfare forever. (Sure, Kagome-sensei had done the research, but that was trivial; it was the idea that mattered, not the grunt work.) He was the one who had initiated the plan to bring them to Leaf and therefore gotten Jiraiya the hat. He was the one who had made the plans that demolished the Exams, thereby getting Leaf half the slots in the tournament and amazing trade deals that would give Jiraiya a good chance of holding onto the Hokageship. (Sure, Keiko had helped refine the plans, but that was trivial; they were Hazō's ideas and none of the team's success would have happened without him.)
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Yeah. Glad we thought to schedule that therapy session.

eaglejarl said:
Septmeber 25, 7am

Hazō grunted as his face met the turf at high speed.

"That was a most youthful feint, young Gōketsu! Was that not youthful, Lee?"

"Indeed, sensei! Most youthful!"

"I thank you, my most youthful opponent, for granting me the opportunity to spar with you! I am quite enjoying it! Come, let us try again!"


o-o-o-o​
Hazō grunted as he hit the ground on his back, all the wind knocked out of him.

"Your taijutsu is exceptional, and very youthful indeed! Please, grant me another round!"

o-o-o-o​
Hazō hissed in pain as he crashed back into the trunk of the tree, his head bouncing painfully off a burl.

"Wonderful! Your youth flows like a river! Please, show me that hook punch deceit again that I may learn it better!"

o-o-o-o​
Hazō slid twenty feet across the grass before he managed to arrest his momentum. Then he lay there, trying to make the world stop spinning so that he could figure out which way was down. Standing up was difficult if you tried to stand on the sky.

"Wonderful! Again!"

o-o-o-o​
Ooof.

"Your youth is amazing!"

o-o-o-o​
Ow.

"So youthful!"

o-o-o-o​
Owowowowow.

"Youth!"
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:D

eaglejarl said:
"Young man," she said firmly. "Your teacher is an interesting case study in neurosis and psychological damage. I'm learning a lot about how to render damaged ninja useful again, either as soldiers or as interrogation targets. As to you and I? I doubt that there is much either of us could learn from the other."
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Oh.

=(

eaglejarl said:
She sighed in annoyance. "Young man, my advice is this: Leave the girl completely alone and tend to yourself. Go to a bar, or a brothel, or a party. Drink yourself unconscious for a night or ten. Bed anything that you desire and will have you, whether it be girls, boys, or sheep. Bemoan the unfairness of the world, punch trees, write horrible and poorly-scanned poetry about the abyss within your soul. Go stand atop Hokage Monument at sundown and scream your pain into the void. After a week or two you'll start to feel silly about it all, and a month after that you'll be mostly over her. Six months later, you'll either have a new girl or be getting over one. Now, if you'll excuse me?"
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I mean, I guess that counts?

Hivemind: 1
Hazou's Crippling Social Ineptitude: ...

Er. Let's just leave it at that.

eaglejarl said:
"Remember the Stimulants Incident? He was about twice that, and he hadn't been taking any stimulants."
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Yeah, definitely Akatsuki.

At least he's not dead. Yet.

eaglejarl said:
Whoever was outside the door, they were excited or upset about something, because they kept pounding and calling out. Halfway down the hall, Hazō's eyes went wide and he raced forward at maximum chakra boost, leaping off the ceiling and flinging the door open before throwing himself at the woman on the threshold and grabbing her in a crushing grip.

"Momma!"
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Awwww.


Great update, @eaglejarl, was fun to read.
 
I feel concern at Hazou's moodiness this update, but relief that he's noticing the worst of it and correcting himself. It gives me confidence that Hazou's just feeling bad because of the breakup and that if he ends up being more abrasive than normal, people will understand fairly easily and it won't cause much harm to their opinions of him.

I agree that we should be making more Skywalkers in our spare time, just in case. Jiraiya's got an important mission to do here and we really don't want to find out that he was five Skywalkers short of what he needed and everything fell apart because of it.

I like the ...eccentric behaviours Hazou adopted this update, though. Particularly the avoiding-the-floor and the sparring with Jounin. They're coping mechanisms right now but I feel like we can turn that into a 'when Hazou is feeling whimsical and it's not inappropriate' thing that Hazou will like to do. Regularly sparring with Jounin also gives Hazou a continuous metric on how well he's improving with his combat skills and, as he gets closer and closer to even with them, Hazou can potentially build connections with them and earn their respect.

Glad Hana's back, I hope she has better luck making Hazou feel better about Akane.
 
Oh, btw. I will vote for any plan that has us persisting in baking and delivering OPSEC cookies to Kakashi at the first opportunity.
 
@eaglejarl as someone who is going through her second puberty while at the same time dealing with a serious break up I have to say you nailed how it feels. I sympathize with Hazō so much right now. Very very well done
 
eaglejarl said:
"Fine," Hazō said. "Mari-sensei says we shouldn't think about it, so let's go do something else. I have a list of all the things to do. Oh, and also?" He leaped upwards, flipping around to stick his feet to the ceiling with chakra. "From now on, the floor is lava—we all need to get some training on three-dimensional movement in case they put trees or something in the tournament arena."
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I'm surprised at our family's lack of reaction to Hazou's *open admission* that he has regressed to list making.
 
eaglejarl said:
Hazō glared after his Clan Head and adopted brother. Wasn't it just typical that no one bothered to tell him anything? It wasn't like he hadn't proven himself to have useful ideas. He was the one who had invented skywalkers and skytowers, thereby transforming warfare forever. (Sure, Kagome-sensei had done the research, but that was trivial; it was the idea that mattered, not the grunt work.) He was the one who had initiated the plan to bring them to Leaf and therefore gotten Jiraiya the hat. He was the one who had made the plans that demolished the Exams, thereby getting Leaf half the slots in the tournament and amazing trade deals that would give Jiraiya a good chance of holding onto the Hokageship. (Sure, Keiko had helped refine the plans, but that was trivial; they were Hazō's ideas and none of the team's success would have happened without him.)
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Bad Hazou. None of the teams' successes would have happened if any of those people were not there.

Also, I will only vote for plans that have us doing something to restock Skywalker stores.

They don't need to be totally restocked, but I am not comfortable with not having a stash of them around.

Edit: Also do something other than "the floor is lava" please.
 
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Roadie said:
That's a mental condition called "being a teenager".
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Eh. Maybe? I dunno. Can't sympathize.

On this episode of wild mass guessing regarding internal Konohan politics:

What do once we get Naruto back? Say we get him back, everyone comes out okay, and things are hunky dory with that stuff. How does that affect the political situation in Leaf? Jiraiya's not really happy being hokage, but there aren't really other options, as he's mentioned.
 
I would like to put a damper on the victory march by pointing out that there's a very real chance that Naruto does not come home.

Or worse, that he comes back broken.
 
[×] Action Plan: Abusing Precommittments

  • Date Ami
  • Bake OPSEC Cookies and deliver them
  • Restock Skywalker stores
 
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