Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
And thus the Merchant Council was toppled by a Dark Alliance comprised of the Gouketsu, Yabai Cafe and the Telescope Merchant.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- 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
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Hmm.
- Two businesses, one expensive but niche and one cheap but commonplace, forging a future together despite having nothing in common.
- Two legal entities, one humble and weak, the other prideful and powerful; an inexplicable attraction between them.
- And two lovers destined for each other, yet forever unable to meet.
- Up against a soulless institution which wishes to tear them all apart.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Shipping, mostly.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I mean if you want to discuss shipping I think we have a proposal for that involving a bunch of storage scrolls?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Hmm. Are we stealing ideas from Byakuren? Indeed, the telescope merchant traveled a lot on foot as a civilian, so he must know all dangerous flora & fauna as well as all safe/fast travel routes. We could turn the Café into the first fast-food restaurant, then send its products all over the world through Jibura's routes with our storage scroll trucks.
Excellent idea, @Cariyaga.
Edit: Ah, I see @MMKII figured it out faster than me.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The thing about consistently rolling social combat is that, with the kind of opponents you've been taking on, a rigid mechanical interpretation would see updates where you are socially crushed by everyone every time. That would be boring and ironically unsimulationist, and would probably result in levels of salt orders of magnitude greater than what we get about Hazō's narrative socials now. Oh, and it would leave you drowning in Mental Consequences for all time.
I don't have an immediate, obvious solution to this.
I'm sure @faflec will jump in to correct me if necessary, but Keiko had only been to the Yabai Cafe twice before last chapter. You'll note that she was enthusiastically welcomed as their most frequent customer.
On a note unrelated to all this, I've been skimming the MfD Discord, and there's one thing I'd like to comment on. We all know that there's been long-running player dissatisfaction with Hazō's OPSEC performance versus player intent (and sometimes arguments from characterisation). Complaints on the subject are constant and sometimes bitter, and naturally crescendo after updates when Hazō accidentally lets something slip.
In the recent Motherhood update when Hazō narrated his adventures to Hana, he consciously pushed himself to his limit, delivering (to the best of the players' knowledge) a flawless OPSEC performance over several hours before the person he trusted most in the world and wanted to comfort him/validate his choices. The player response, aside from someone asking how much detail he gave (and being told that it was just the right amount)?
Not. One. Word.
That is all.
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Omake: The Roar
- Location
- Under a Rock
The idea came to me, and I wanted to see how it worked out:
---
The sound is loud enough to shake the trees and the ground. It isn't strictly speaking a boom, because a boom only lasts a moment, and this was a roar that seemed to drag on forever. Nothing really lasts forever though. The horrible roar lasted less than a minute. 15 seconds, really. The people in the small hamlet begin to pick themselves up.
A dozen people start shouting. Confused adults comfort crying children.
The elders aren't confused. Its been a while, and it doesn't quite match what they remember, but the signs are clear enough. This is a chakra beast attack. And from the sound of it, its the biggest chakra beast the world has ever seen.
Everyone is taken inside the walls, into the underground shelter. Panic sets in. There are people still outside. Woodsman and hunters, who might be hours away. Small children who were playing in the woods. The elders manage the panic, telling everyone how this really is the best way, and running outside to grab people will just put more in jeopardy. They remember hard learned lessons from long ago.
While the elders manage panic, the mayor is free to actually help matters. Searches are organized, everyone is found, and "I told you so"s from the elders to younger parents are kept to a minimum. Even if the elders, had, in fact, told everyone that the woods were dangerous. Even if it had been at least 20 years since a chakra beast attacked, this incident is proof enough for the elders that children should never be allowed to play in the woods.
But during the bad few hours when everything was uncertain, the mayor makes a decision. She has, in a small pouch that she keeps with her at all times, three wooden sticks. The sticks have strange carvings on them. The marks looked similar to the markings on the village storage seals, though the sticks had no activator. One is green, one is yellow, and the third is red. She was given the pouch by the previous mayor, who was given it by the mayor before that, who swears he was given it by a ninja. An actual ninja, with a headband and everything.
The exact nature of the sticks had been muddled over the past 40 years. There was an instruction booklet, but it had long since been lost. The basics were simple though. If you need a ninja, break a stick, and one of them will come. Break the green stick if the problem was simple, just too dangerous for a normal human. Break the yellow if the problem threatens multiple lives. Break the red only if the whole hamlet is in danger.
So which one to break?
Its been an hour since the Roar, which had gained a capital letter at some point. If whatever it was hadn't killed them yet, it was unlikely to. Honestly, all that was needed was information. How close was the beast, where was it going, did they need to evacuate?
She broke the green stick. Then, in the 1000s of other decisions required by the day, nearly forgot about it.
---
They stayed in the shelter for a day and a half more, at the insistence of the elders. They ate and drank out of the emergency storage scrolls. The activator hadn't been working well lately, and it took a few tries to get the food out, but everything was going well besides that.
The hamlet began idly speculating about the cause. There wasn't a lot to do in the shelter, and it was on everyone's mind anyway.
The elders were unanimous in believing that it was a chakra beast, though they didn't know of any that got big enough to cause the roar. Perhaps whatever dread beast which wrecked Leaf 60 years ago had escaped again?
The children were unanimous in believing that it was Lord Sixth, having a rollicking training match. The unanimity broke down over just who he was training with, and if he was winning.
After the third fight had broken out over the precise abilities of Lord Sixth's shadow clones (Not the third fight overall mind you, or even the third fight over Lord Sixth's abilities; the third fight over his shadow clones in particular), even the elders agreed that it was time to leave. Nothing else had happened since the Roar, and they didn't want to tax their emergency supplies if they didn't have to.
And so it was the mayors first night back in her own bed since the roar that mayor was awoken by a ninja.
"Oy!" Said the kunoichi from outside. She had just thrown a small pebble at the mayor through an open window.
The mayor rubbed the sleep from her eyes quickly, and hurried to the window. A Ninja! A real Ninja! With a headband and everything!
"You used your C-Rank mission tag, whats up?"
The mayor was briefly confused, before she remembered the broken green stick in her pouch.
"Um, I broke the tag a bit after the Roar happened, because-"
"Alright, that question was misleading. I know exactly whats up, because this is the infintieth one horse hamlet that I've had to visit just today."
The mayor was affronted, though she tried not to let it show. Under her glorious leadership, the town had recently acquired its /fourth/ horse. It was because both mares had just given birth, but still.
The kunoichi didn't notice or didn't care. She was too busy getting into a rant.
"And most of yesterday was spent dealing with idiots who used their B-Rank mission tags. I swear I'm going to kill the idiot who came up with this priority system, which mandates that we have to respond to panicking idiots before we respond to people like you who actually kept their heads on straight. Did you know that town twenty miles thataway actually used an A-Rank tag? I can't deny him a new one, and it isn't worth the paperwork to levy a fine, so instead I'm making sure that every soul within a hundred miles knows he's an idiot."
"Anyway, the 'Roar', which is by far the least annoying name for it that I've heard so far, was a huge volcanic eruption to the north of Fire. Half the mountain's gone, you should really see it one day. Anyway, nothing is coming to attack you, and the woods are exactly as safe as they were before."
The kunoichi's expression sobered. "But this /will/ be a bad year for the crops. Stockpile as best you can. There will be two relief caravans that should be going through this area, one in November and one in January. This is a list of what /will/ be on it, come hell or high water. We will try to get more on it, and if we do we will send an updated list so that you can plan accordingly."
After that, the kunoichi handed the mayor another green stick, turned to leave. Then she stopped, pulling a fistful of green and yellow sticks.
"This town has grown a bit since the mission tags were last allocated. Technically its supposed to wait until the next census before your allowance gets reassigned, but who knows how long that will be, and since you were responsible I use the power vested in me as a Chunin to recognize you as not being a dumbass and hereby increase your allowance of C and B rank mission seals."
Then she finished leaving.
The kunoichi was true to her word. The harvest was lean. An update to the emergency supply list was sent mid fall. The caravans arrived exactly when they said they would, carrying exactly what they said they would carry.
The mayor asked if she could keep the storage seals as well. The caravan said no, as there was a shortage of seals these days.
In the most remote, most provincial parts of the Water-Fire alliance, that was the most people heard about the death of Goketsu Hazou.
---
All roads, high or low, lead to Leaf. Not all of those roads are created equal. Lord Sixth's Peace Path is queen among them. Its branches connect all the hidden villages on the main continent. Trade flows along them. Counting all branches, the Peace Path is more than a thousand miles long.
At major intersections curious things called cities happen.
In the cities, information is more abundant. The news bulletin was updated hourly with information painstakingly relayed along the high road by light signals. The ink would still be running as everyone crowded around, eager for more information.
Obituaries popped up all over town. The details of his death were highly classified, so all obituaries either parroted the official story or made up their own.
Goketsu Hazou, head of the Goketsu clan, has died at age 65. He was killed by an exploding volcano, possibly trying to contain it.
Beyond that, some chose to focus on his grand story, the journey from Mist, to the wild, to Leaf, to power.
Others on his family and personal life. He was apparently famous in Leaf proper for holding game nights. There was even a seat that got raffled off to a random Leaf civilian!
Most chose what the cities cared about the most. His uplift tour. Starting about twenty years ago, Goketsu had retired from active ninja life. He instead would go about the lands of Water and Fire, helping people for free. He would build aqueducts, clear farmland, fight the occasional bandit, expose and correct corruption. Once Goketsu Hazou showed up in your area, problems would get solved.
And there was excitement to it. He could show up anywhere! Sure, if he learned of a big problem he would be boring for a bit and show up where expected, but beyond that there was no pattern to it that anyone could see. He actually rolled dice to determine where to go next, and would even make a show of it.
It didn't matter what the dice showed, he would go there, and see what he could to do help. When questioned about if this was actually the way to help people best, he said of course. He said his thinking had gotten too abstract, too removed from tangible problems, and that he needed to actually get out in the world and interact with it in order to learn what it needed.
The obituaries had one more thing in common, which was the date of the funeral.
---
The funeral was beautiful. No body could be recovered, but his spare headband was buried with the highest honors.
The funeral was also long. Dignitaries from as far as Snow had gathered, and everyone wanted to make a speech.
Lord Sixth, Goketsu Naruto, gave the longest. He said that of all gathered for the funeral, perhaps 2,000 total, a full third of them owed Hazou their lives, though usually indirectly. Naruto himself owed his life directly, and twice.
It was Hazou who had championed the Chakra Beast removal efforts. The Chakra tax, which had lead to the Peace Path, which has thus far lived up to its goals and its name.
A dozen alliances, a hundred improvements. And behind all of them, the support of Goketsu Hazou.
---
Public comments from the rest of the Goketsu clan were sparse.
Goketsu Noburi expressed frustration to a journalist.
"Half these shinobi talking about how great he is now that he's dead were the same people who talked shit behind his back about him being weak. Sure, he never hit S-Rank like the rest of the Goketsu kids. Honestly, he never even got that high into the A ranks. Too busy doing things to train. But he has done more good than any five S-Rankers put together."
"Lord Sixth excepted, of course," added Goketsu Mari from her chair.
Goketsu Kagome could not be reached for comment. Journalists had long since learned that when Goketsu Kagome said he was unavailable, he meant it. Trying to contact him would result in explosions, so he was allowed to grieve for his student in privacy and peace.
Nara Keiko was stoic in public, as always. She was sitting in the chair next to Tenten, as always. They both answered the journalist's questions, as it was a matter of public record that Tenten was a close friend of the Goketsu, and Keiko in particular. "That I would outlive my clan head is to be expected, I suppose. Of all of us, Hazou always took the most risks, while I took the least. It should not be a surprise that one of them killed him."
Tenten gently touched her hand.
Nara Keiko paused for a moment. "I will say this. The world is a better, brighter place because Hazou was who he was, and took the risks that he did."
---
Orochimaru overheard Noburi's interview. He suppressed the urge to laugh underneath his... disguise kit. He had to think of it as a disguise kit or the universe itself would realize... that it was a disguise kit, and certainly not a technique that Orochimaru had stolen from an alternate timeline.
Of course Orochimaru attended the funeral. He had hoped to learn something. Hazou had acted so mysteriously the final few months that Orochimaru was seriously considering that he faked his own death, and that clues as to why might be present here.
Instead, he was getting entertainment.
Not S-Rank. Bah. The reason the world didn't think Hazou was S Ranked was because he and his siblings had finally learned how to keep secrets. Orochimaru had seen Hazou use a whip made of some unknown material, a storage seal carved into the whip, and a B-Rank jutsu to fling a rock the size of his torso at four times the speed of sound. The jutsu allowed the rock to pass through dirt unhindered, which meant he usually did this underground. From a mile away.
More disturbingly, he was able to find Orochimaru when Orochimaru didn't want to be found.
The first time it happened was right before Jiraiya died. Hazou just burst into his lab, and asked him to fix it. The disease had progressed, and not even Tsunade's treatments were helping. Hazou had somehow learned that Orochimaru didn't age anymore, and demanded the secret.
He'd gotten it. And been furious of course, demanding a better way.
Orochimaru said thats what he'd been working on all this time, and was prepared to lose a fight and re-spawn elsewhere after being disbelieved, yet again.
His jaw had dropped when Hazou asked him what he'd needed. That was the start of Hazou's famous uplift tours. They served seven purposes.
The first two were public. They actually did help people, and they actually did give Hazou ground level information on what people needed. Water-Fire life outcomes improved noticeably because of them.
Third, what everyone thought was true, it improved the public image of Leaf in general and Hazou in particular. Cities were becoming a power in their own right, and getting on their good side was useful.
Fourth, it started an arms race to get on the good side of cities. Thus improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and started diverting some of the world's ninja power towards something constructive.
Fifth, ninja competing to see who could help cities the most did an amazing amount of work towards improving civilian-ninja relationships. It was undoing decades of bad blood. Unfortunately there were centuries of bad blood to work through, but you had to start somewhere.
Sixth, it gave Hazou an excuse to go where he wanted and gather information. It shocked the both of them that there were still people who didn't realize Hazou could roll whatever he pleased on his dice.
Seventh, in a very secret location in Orochimaru's lair, under an absurd number of protections, there was a steadily growing pile of storage scrolls. They contained bodies of the recently dead. Tens of thousands of them, gathered from the graveyards and sickbeds of a hundred villages. They weren't for experiments. They were for rescuing.
Hazou understood storage seals better than anyone ever had, and his experiments were conclusive. Storage seal damage was applied on retrieval, not on storage. If you were very good and very, very careful, you could improve a storage seal after it had already stored something. So if medical jutsu improved to the point where the recently dead could be brought back, and storage seal tech improved to the point where living things could be safely retrieved, then those scrolls weren't full of corpses, they were full of people.
Hazou's mother was in there. Tsunade was in there. Jiraiya was in there. Mari had made arrangements to be taken there as soon as it looked like she was going to die, because it meant she would be retrieved faster. Hazou and Orochimaru had worked together ceaselessly for 15 years so that they would stop being in there, and start being out here.
They were getting close. That moss had started growing again after they sealed and unsealed it.
And then Hazou had found something. Orochimaru didn't know what. He had been away for weeks, and when he came back he didn't talk about ot. Didn't say where he was going for months. Didn't make any public appearances. Then he had burned a whole stack of notes, inscribed a whole stack of seals on black paper, and left. 12 hours later came the Roar. Leaf had to know something was up, because they knew that mountain was not a volcano, and they had gone through a considerable amount of effort to make it seem like it was.
There are secret things in this world, beyond the sight or power of the village system. By all appearances, Hazou had run into one of them, and had blown up mountain trying to kill it.
Orochimaru assumed that he won.
---
The sound is loud enough to shake the trees and the ground. It isn't strictly speaking a boom, because a boom only lasts a moment, and this was a roar that seemed to drag on forever. Nothing really lasts forever though. The horrible roar lasted less than a minute. 15 seconds, really. The people in the small hamlet begin to pick themselves up.
A dozen people start shouting. Confused adults comfort crying children.
The elders aren't confused. Its been a while, and it doesn't quite match what they remember, but the signs are clear enough. This is a chakra beast attack. And from the sound of it, its the biggest chakra beast the world has ever seen.
Everyone is taken inside the walls, into the underground shelter. Panic sets in. There are people still outside. Woodsman and hunters, who might be hours away. Small children who were playing in the woods. The elders manage the panic, telling everyone how this really is the best way, and running outside to grab people will just put more in jeopardy. They remember hard learned lessons from long ago.
While the elders manage panic, the mayor is free to actually help matters. Searches are organized, everyone is found, and "I told you so"s from the elders to younger parents are kept to a minimum. Even if the elders, had, in fact, told everyone that the woods were dangerous. Even if it had been at least 20 years since a chakra beast attacked, this incident is proof enough for the elders that children should never be allowed to play in the woods.
But during the bad few hours when everything was uncertain, the mayor makes a decision. She has, in a small pouch that she keeps with her at all times, three wooden sticks. The sticks have strange carvings on them. The marks looked similar to the markings on the village storage seals, though the sticks had no activator. One is green, one is yellow, and the third is red. She was given the pouch by the previous mayor, who was given it by the mayor before that, who swears he was given it by a ninja. An actual ninja, with a headband and everything.
The exact nature of the sticks had been muddled over the past 40 years. There was an instruction booklet, but it had long since been lost. The basics were simple though. If you need a ninja, break a stick, and one of them will come. Break the green stick if the problem was simple, just too dangerous for a normal human. Break the yellow if the problem threatens multiple lives. Break the red only if the whole hamlet is in danger.
So which one to break?
Its been an hour since the Roar, which had gained a capital letter at some point. If whatever it was hadn't killed them yet, it was unlikely to. Honestly, all that was needed was information. How close was the beast, where was it going, did they need to evacuate?
She broke the green stick. Then, in the 1000s of other decisions required by the day, nearly forgot about it.
---
They stayed in the shelter for a day and a half more, at the insistence of the elders. They ate and drank out of the emergency storage scrolls. The activator hadn't been working well lately, and it took a few tries to get the food out, but everything was going well besides that.
The hamlet began idly speculating about the cause. There wasn't a lot to do in the shelter, and it was on everyone's mind anyway.
The elders were unanimous in believing that it was a chakra beast, though they didn't know of any that got big enough to cause the roar. Perhaps whatever dread beast which wrecked Leaf 60 years ago had escaped again?
The children were unanimous in believing that it was Lord Sixth, having a rollicking training match. The unanimity broke down over just who he was training with, and if he was winning.
After the third fight had broken out over the precise abilities of Lord Sixth's shadow clones (Not the third fight overall mind you, or even the third fight over Lord Sixth's abilities; the third fight over his shadow clones in particular), even the elders agreed that it was time to leave. Nothing else had happened since the Roar, and they didn't want to tax their emergency supplies if they didn't have to.
And so it was the mayors first night back in her own bed since the roar that mayor was awoken by a ninja.
"Oy!" Said the kunoichi from outside. She had just thrown a small pebble at the mayor through an open window.
The mayor rubbed the sleep from her eyes quickly, and hurried to the window. A Ninja! A real Ninja! With a headband and everything!
"You used your C-Rank mission tag, whats up?"
The mayor was briefly confused, before she remembered the broken green stick in her pouch.
"Um, I broke the tag a bit after the Roar happened, because-"
"Alright, that question was misleading. I know exactly whats up, because this is the infintieth one horse hamlet that I've had to visit just today."
The mayor was affronted, though she tried not to let it show. Under her glorious leadership, the town had recently acquired its /fourth/ horse. It was because both mares had just given birth, but still.
The kunoichi didn't notice or didn't care. She was too busy getting into a rant.
"And most of yesterday was spent dealing with idiots who used their B-Rank mission tags. I swear I'm going to kill the idiot who came up with this priority system, which mandates that we have to respond to panicking idiots before we respond to people like you who actually kept their heads on straight. Did you know that town twenty miles thataway actually used an A-Rank tag? I can't deny him a new one, and it isn't worth the paperwork to levy a fine, so instead I'm making sure that every soul within a hundred miles knows he's an idiot."
"Anyway, the 'Roar', which is by far the least annoying name for it that I've heard so far, was a huge volcanic eruption to the north of Fire. Half the mountain's gone, you should really see it one day. Anyway, nothing is coming to attack you, and the woods are exactly as safe as they were before."
The kunoichi's expression sobered. "But this /will/ be a bad year for the crops. Stockpile as best you can. There will be two relief caravans that should be going through this area, one in November and one in January. This is a list of what /will/ be on it, come hell or high water. We will try to get more on it, and if we do we will send an updated list so that you can plan accordingly."
After that, the kunoichi handed the mayor another green stick, turned to leave. Then she stopped, pulling a fistful of green and yellow sticks.
"This town has grown a bit since the mission tags were last allocated. Technically its supposed to wait until the next census before your allowance gets reassigned, but who knows how long that will be, and since you were responsible I use the power vested in me as a Chunin to recognize you as not being a dumbass and hereby increase your allowance of C and B rank mission seals."
Then she finished leaving.
The kunoichi was true to her word. The harvest was lean. An update to the emergency supply list was sent mid fall. The caravans arrived exactly when they said they would, carrying exactly what they said they would carry.
The mayor asked if she could keep the storage seals as well. The caravan said no, as there was a shortage of seals these days.
In the most remote, most provincial parts of the Water-Fire alliance, that was the most people heard about the death of Goketsu Hazou.
---
All roads, high or low, lead to Leaf. Not all of those roads are created equal. Lord Sixth's Peace Path is queen among them. Its branches connect all the hidden villages on the main continent. Trade flows along them. Counting all branches, the Peace Path is more than a thousand miles long.
At major intersections curious things called cities happen.
In the cities, information is more abundant. The news bulletin was updated hourly with information painstakingly relayed along the high road by light signals. The ink would still be running as everyone crowded around, eager for more information.
Obituaries popped up all over town. The details of his death were highly classified, so all obituaries either parroted the official story or made up their own.
Goketsu Hazou, head of the Goketsu clan, has died at age 65. He was killed by an exploding volcano, possibly trying to contain it.
Beyond that, some chose to focus on his grand story, the journey from Mist, to the wild, to Leaf, to power.
Others on his family and personal life. He was apparently famous in Leaf proper for holding game nights. There was even a seat that got raffled off to a random Leaf civilian!
Most chose what the cities cared about the most. His uplift tour. Starting about twenty years ago, Goketsu had retired from active ninja life. He instead would go about the lands of Water and Fire, helping people for free. He would build aqueducts, clear farmland, fight the occasional bandit, expose and correct corruption. Once Goketsu Hazou showed up in your area, problems would get solved.
And there was excitement to it. He could show up anywhere! Sure, if he learned of a big problem he would be boring for a bit and show up where expected, but beyond that there was no pattern to it that anyone could see. He actually rolled dice to determine where to go next, and would even make a show of it.
It didn't matter what the dice showed, he would go there, and see what he could to do help. When questioned about if this was actually the way to help people best, he said of course. He said his thinking had gotten too abstract, too removed from tangible problems, and that he needed to actually get out in the world and interact with it in order to learn what it needed.
The obituaries had one more thing in common, which was the date of the funeral.
---
The funeral was beautiful. No body could be recovered, but his spare headband was buried with the highest honors.
The funeral was also long. Dignitaries from as far as Snow had gathered, and everyone wanted to make a speech.
Lord Sixth, Goketsu Naruto, gave the longest. He said that of all gathered for the funeral, perhaps 2,000 total, a full third of them owed Hazou their lives, though usually indirectly. Naruto himself owed his life directly, and twice.
It was Hazou who had championed the Chakra Beast removal efforts. The Chakra tax, which had lead to the Peace Path, which has thus far lived up to its goals and its name.
A dozen alliances, a hundred improvements. And behind all of them, the support of Goketsu Hazou.
---
Public comments from the rest of the Goketsu clan were sparse.
Goketsu Noburi expressed frustration to a journalist.
"Half these shinobi talking about how great he is now that he's dead were the same people who talked shit behind his back about him being weak. Sure, he never hit S-Rank like the rest of the Goketsu kids. Honestly, he never even got that high into the A ranks. Too busy doing things to train. But he has done more good than any five S-Rankers put together."
"Lord Sixth excepted, of course," added Goketsu Mari from her chair.
Goketsu Kagome could not be reached for comment. Journalists had long since learned that when Goketsu Kagome said he was unavailable, he meant it. Trying to contact him would result in explosions, so he was allowed to grieve for his student in privacy and peace.
Nara Keiko was stoic in public, as always. She was sitting in the chair next to Tenten, as always. They both answered the journalist's questions, as it was a matter of public record that Tenten was a close friend of the Goketsu, and Keiko in particular. "That I would outlive my clan head is to be expected, I suppose. Of all of us, Hazou always took the most risks, while I took the least. It should not be a surprise that one of them killed him."
Tenten gently touched her hand.
Nara Keiko paused for a moment. "I will say this. The world is a better, brighter place because Hazou was who he was, and took the risks that he did."
---
Orochimaru overheard Noburi's interview. He suppressed the urge to laugh underneath his... disguise kit. He had to think of it as a disguise kit or the universe itself would realize... that it was a disguise kit, and certainly not a technique that Orochimaru had stolen from an alternate timeline.
Of course Orochimaru attended the funeral. He had hoped to learn something. Hazou had acted so mysteriously the final few months that Orochimaru was seriously considering that he faked his own death, and that clues as to why might be present here.
Instead, he was getting entertainment.
Not S-Rank. Bah. The reason the world didn't think Hazou was S Ranked was because he and his siblings had finally learned how to keep secrets. Orochimaru had seen Hazou use a whip made of some unknown material, a storage seal carved into the whip, and a B-Rank jutsu to fling a rock the size of his torso at four times the speed of sound. The jutsu allowed the rock to pass through dirt unhindered, which meant he usually did this underground. From a mile away.
More disturbingly, he was able to find Orochimaru when Orochimaru didn't want to be found.
The first time it happened was right before Jiraiya died. Hazou just burst into his lab, and asked him to fix it. The disease had progressed, and not even Tsunade's treatments were helping. Hazou had somehow learned that Orochimaru didn't age anymore, and demanded the secret.
He'd gotten it. And been furious of course, demanding a better way.
Orochimaru said thats what he'd been working on all this time, and was prepared to lose a fight and re-spawn elsewhere after being disbelieved, yet again.
His jaw had dropped when Hazou asked him what he'd needed. That was the start of Hazou's famous uplift tours. They served seven purposes.
The first two were public. They actually did help people, and they actually did give Hazou ground level information on what people needed. Water-Fire life outcomes improved noticeably because of them.
Third, what everyone thought was true, it improved the public image of Leaf in general and Hazou in particular. Cities were becoming a power in their own right, and getting on their good side was useful.
Fourth, it started an arms race to get on the good side of cities. Thus improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and started diverting some of the world's ninja power towards something constructive.
Fifth, ninja competing to see who could help cities the most did an amazing amount of work towards improving civilian-ninja relationships. It was undoing decades of bad blood. Unfortunately there were centuries of bad blood to work through, but you had to start somewhere.
Sixth, it gave Hazou an excuse to go where he wanted and gather information. It shocked the both of them that there were still people who didn't realize Hazou could roll whatever he pleased on his dice.
Seventh, in a very secret location in Orochimaru's lair, under an absurd number of protections, there was a steadily growing pile of storage scrolls. They contained bodies of the recently dead. Tens of thousands of them, gathered from the graveyards and sickbeds of a hundred villages. They weren't for experiments. They were for rescuing.
Hazou understood storage seals better than anyone ever had, and his experiments were conclusive. Storage seal damage was applied on retrieval, not on storage. If you were very good and very, very careful, you could improve a storage seal after it had already stored something. So if medical jutsu improved to the point where the recently dead could be brought back, and storage seal tech improved to the point where living things could be safely retrieved, then those scrolls weren't full of corpses, they were full of people.
Hazou's mother was in there. Tsunade was in there. Jiraiya was in there. Mari had made arrangements to be taken there as soon as it looked like she was going to die, because it meant she would be retrieved faster. Hazou and Orochimaru had worked together ceaselessly for 15 years so that they would stop being in there, and start being out here.
They were getting close. That moss had started growing again after they sealed and unsealed it.
And then Hazou had found something. Orochimaru didn't know what. He had been away for weeks, and when he came back he didn't talk about ot. Didn't say where he was going for months. Didn't make any public appearances. Then he had burned a whole stack of notes, inscribed a whole stack of seals on black paper, and left. 12 hours later came the Roar. Leaf had to know something was up, because they knew that mountain was not a volcano, and they had gone through a considerable amount of effort to make it seem like it was.
There are secret things in this world, beyond the sight or power of the village system. By all appearances, Hazou had run into one of them, and had blown up mountain trying to kill it.
Orochimaru assumed that he won.
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
To be fair, you did have Hana utterly eviscerate Mari right after that scene. Our recovering OPSEC-breach-a-holic not relapsing sort of took a backseat to that in most people's minds, I suspect.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Love it. Give it a title, do a big copy-edit pass and, barring a veto from another QM, this is going straight into the Apocrypha.
Off-the-top-of-my-head nit-picks:
- Civilians can't trigger storage scrolls. If Hazo's fixed that, drop in a mention (unless you already did and I missed it).
- Tense is inconsistent during the first section
- Be consistent in language/spelling: Headbands vs Hitate (should be Hitaiate/Hitai-ate anyway), Goketsu vs Hazou
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
@Immortal Lurker
That was great! I was just thinking about Future Timeline omakes earlier, funnily enough.
That was great! I was just thinking about Future Timeline omakes earlier, funnily enough.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
Alternate PoV interludes are one of Hazou's most useful super powers after all.
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
It sounds like everyone but us has social skill levels that are too high, then. Maybe there need to be exponential costs for social skills compared to other areas of expertise?
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Hm. On the note, specifically, of the X-Rank Tags... I can see an immediate problem.
Obviously, they can be used by enemies to bring ninja out to get killed.
There's a potential solution in treaties against that, but that requires that they actually be followed... which will likely require a lot more goodwill between nations than we have.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Well, we might be able to do it in twenty years if we get a lot better at politics and arrange for favored people to be in positions of power.FTFY
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I sense you still harbor resentment for what you view as unfair criticisms of some of the less popular instances of exercising QM discretion to players' detriment.
I think I've said as much before, but my only real complaint is that I believe you guys are too soft and allow yourselves to be affected by player salt too readily. This quest wouldn't be half of what it is without you doing your due diligence to ensure our actions have realistic and appropriate consequences, and that interpersonal conflict and character shortcomings are modeled and portrayed appropriately.
(You do a damn good job of that, btw.)
Next time you get flak, I heartily encourage you to respond more along the lines of "Thank you for your feedback. Your displeasure has been noted. Please contribute your ideas to current and future planning if you wish to avoid further dissatisfaction."
Sure, you guys can't expect to never make a mistake. But on the other hand, do you really expect to win any arguments when your opponent literally has has 10-20x or more brains than you, and is determined and motivated to highlight all your faults?
As you note, nobody seems to care to complain all that much unless things turn out poorly. Unless the scales are balanced, I would argue it is far more often than not a mistake to be unduly influenced by such strongly biased attention.
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
This logic is a little redundant. Why would someone complain about something if it was working as they want, as opposed to not how they want? It's a tautology here that people complain when they see something that they disagree with, and don't when they don't.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Yeah, uh... all else aside, we're not really inclined to complain when, say, Keiko manages to outsocial the social specialist... Question it, maybe, but complain? Noooo
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail
Has a decision been made on whether the social reforms are going into place?
Has a decision been made on whether the social reforms are going into place?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've drafted and redrafted a response to this about a zillion times. What it comes down to is that I would put money on the player base being up in arms if, in that scene, Hazō had let slip anything about skywalkers, or Minami's death being plausibly traceable to Jiraiya, or any number of such pieces of information. With that as a premise, together with your explanation (which I accept), the conclusion I reach is "All else being equal, players won't care about this unless it's bad". My instinctive response becomes "Then why should I?"
That would punish social specs, who can't afford to let their combat skills fall behind while they focus on their specialisation. Unfortunately, the present situation also makes sense IC. Your years in the wilderness hardened you in combat terms, and also featured regular social interaction with a maximum of the same three people plus Kagome; even Mari can only do so much with that.
Absolutely. However, I think it would take an exceptional individual not to harbour resentment of unfair criticisms almost by definition (at least if they came from somebody whose opinion that person couldn't just shrug off).
Also absolutely. I think you have an trend of being less influenced by other people's feelings and opinions (in a good way), which I often envy. By nature, I tend to react strongly to both criticism and praise. I'm working on it, but core personality features are a pain to work on.
We do actually already do that with people whose opinions we consider stupid. "I'm sorry you feel that way" is a classic for the ambiguity. We, or at least I, should probably make more of an effort to apply it to the vocal minority of critical regulars, rather than just, say, lurkers who only pop up to express their dissatisfaction.
I believe they are. They're not in the ruleset yet because spoons, but feel free to go ahead with character builds and such on the assumption that they will be.
Excellent. That gives us a lot more space to work with fixing Kei (and possibly Hazou depending on how future discussions go).
And regarding the rest of your comment: I'm sorry to say that at the time of the chapter, I remember thinking to myself "Oh phew, Hazou did well in OPSEC" but then neglected to make a comment to that effect. In future, I will endeavour to comment on things that I liked more consistently.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Yes, that's been a problem for me as well.
I've tried to do better on it recently; hence going over the chapter multiple times and commenting on things Kei did.
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
This is just how humans brain, honestly. Negatives (real and imagined) pretty much always outway positives when it comes to inspiring effort and motivating decision-making.
Yes, this is a bit 'pop-psych'y, and I'm not saying it's justified because as a geneticist the naturalistic fallacy annoys the hell out of me, but it's something you have to deal with in quests, much like the difficulty of long term collaborative planning and the tendency of questers to always go for the shinies and waifus whenever given the option.
I mean, there's a reason why half the long-time posters here could give Kagome paranoia lessons, even disregarding the parts where they're just memeing around.