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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Cariyaga said:
Easy, just get rid of Leaf.
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Hmmm. You know, based on what Jiraiya said about what Hiashi would do once he gains power, we'd basically have no choice but to have the entire clan become missing nin again, if Hiashi becomes Hokage. If that happened, Jiraiya would have plenty of time to train us, and no reason to withhold the 'hide the bodies' level stuff. :evil:

So we don't actually need to destroy Leaf itself, just let Hiashi get the hat.
... which admittedly might destroy Leaf anyway, but at least we're not the ones doing it.
 
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Despite Jiraiyas insistence that leaving the village would be bad news, I'm sure we could chill out in Hidden Mountain or squat on Snek Uncles couch for a while.
 
faflec said:
Yes. A Hyuga was present when Jiraiya got Hidde Mountain's location, and we've established in the past that Hidden Villages keep track of missing-nin. Once he becomes Hokage it gets worse.
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Huh. Interesting.

I suppose we could lead them in a mass exodus somewhere else. There's a lot of places we can get to mostly untraceably if we have Skywalkers, if not something out of the blue like chilling out at the bottom of the ocean/large lake for a significant amount of time.
 
MMKII said:
Huh. Interesting.

I suppose we could lead them in a mass exodus somewhere else. There's a lot of places we can get to mostly untraceably if we have Skywalkers, if not something out of the blue like chilling out at the bottom of the ocean/large lake for a significant amount of time.
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Wait, how do we chill out at the bottom of the ocean? Won't any seals we use get wet?
More importantly, that would take a LOT of skywalkers to get the entire village somewhere. The village may not be all that big compared to Leaf, but there's still a lot of them.
 
Sentient Tree said:
Wait, how do we chill out at the bottom of the ocean? Won't any seals we use get wet?
More importantly, that would take a LOT of skywalkers to get the entire village somewhere. The village may not be all that big compared to Leaf, but there's still a lot of them.
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IIRC Mountain has a higher than average amount of Earth users, so we could probably whip something up with enough tunneling jutsu with some 5SB'd supports or something? Radvic had some ideas for how we would be able to do this on our own though, last time the subject was brought up.
 
MMKII said:
IIRC Mountain has a higher than average amount of Earth users, so we could probably whip something up with enough tunneling jutsu with some 5SB'd supports or something? Radvic had some ideas for how we would be able to do this on our own though, last time the subject was brought up.
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Given that Hazō has the pangolin tunneling jutsu which creates a 2m tunnel, your limiting factor is not number of Earth users, it's Hazō's chakra. If only there were some way to get more....
 
I suppose having 80ish ninja fuel Hazou as he builds tunnels is possible?

Then again, Jiraiya will be there and he might know better jutsu. So we probably would wanna fuel him up if he does.
 
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Chapter 235: Layers of Preparation
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    • Hazō leapt from the stands among the shouts of "Gō-ke-tsu! Gō-ke-tsu! Gō-ke-tsu!", over the heads of a young civilian couple who had been surreptitiously holding hands during the match. From the corner of his eye, he spotted Noburi emerging from the crowd more sedately.

    "Congratulations, Keiko," Hazō said warmly.

    "Yeah, nice," Noburi agreed, following up behind him.

    "A stupendous performance!" Jiraiya declared from suddenly right between the boys, clapping them both on the shoulder and causing both of them to jump.

    Keiko broke into a small grin and looked down demurely. "A performance only possible with the help of my brothers' tactics, and my Pangolin allies' martial prowess."

    "Aw, my little girl is adorable when she tries to be humble! Don't you agree folks?" Jiraiya asked bombastically, turning to the stands.

    The crowd began hooting and clapping. Hazō was suddenly acutely aware that the judges' proximity meant that their sound amplification technique was still affecting Team Uplift's conversation. From the sickly pale shade Keiko was quickly turning, he guessed she was realizing the same thing.

    "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," continued Jiraiya, turning back to the kids. "Can you forgive a proud father his teasing?" he asked, with genuine warmth in his voice. "You fought well. You showed exactly how terrifyingly competent you are, brothers and summons included. Their power is part of yours, as yours is theirs. We are all stronger together, and that's a good thing. Although, next time, I want you to dodge even if you don't think the knife will hit. I would be sad to lose you."

    Keiko found her voice. "I believe that my forgiveness might be purchased with more of those little chocolates we had at dessert the other night."

    Jiraiya beamed. "I'll see what we can do. Come on, family celebration time!" He spun on his heel, bright red haori and white hair flaring out around him as he began sprinting away from the crowds. Keiko followed immediately, and the boys only moments later.

    -o-o-​

    "Thank you for tolerating the showmanship, Keiko. I know that must have been stressful," Jiraiya said as he laid out an series of seals on a circle of tree trunks around a fallen log.

    "I am glad I could be useful," Keiko intoned, steadying her breath from the adrenaline of impromptu improvised socializing, not to mention the sprint to get away from the crowd.

    "You stop that," Jiraiya said, frowning. He strode over to where Keiko had taken up residence - a spot where the log crossed in front of another tree, forming a natural bench to lean against. He knelt down and, after almost reaching for one of Keiko's hands, instead gestured for her to hold a hand out. He pulled a seal from a chest pocket, poofing a small jar that smelled of chocolate into her outstretched palm. "Sure I played up the delivery for show, but everything I said back there was true. I am proud of you. All of you."

    "Why?" Noburi asked, the bitterness in his voice something of a shock. "Sure, Keiko won, and Hazō probably will too because of course he will, but I lost to the daughter of one of our main rivals because I was too pig-headed to just train my my fundamentals like they did. I cared more about being big and flashy and feeling important than actually succeeding. So I lost big and flashy, in front of a huge crowd. Including my little sisters, who didn't bother talking to me afterwards."

    It came out in a rush, the most Noburi had spoken all day. The most he had spoken since he regained consciousness after being subjected to… whatever it was Hinata had done at the end of their match. Part of Hazō's mind had been spinning with attempts to counter that style of rapid striking, and the best he had come up with so far was detonating a full-strength explosive tag in melee range of himself. He couldn't really blame Noburi for losing to it. Sure, it might have been better to improve his Syrup Trap Jutsu, or his footwork, or maybe even some combination of tossing explosives at close range and then shielding himself with Hozuki's Mantle, or maybe you could use clones with Hozuki's mantle to confine the explosion and increase the amount of damage done to things close by, or-

    "Keiko, your mission for tonight is to throw chocolates at your brother's mouth until he can't say dumb things anymore," instructed Jiraiya sarcastically, interrupting Hazō's thoughts. "Let me know at the sunset check-in if you need to restock. We'll find it in the budget somehow."

    He stood. "Noburi, you're right, you made a mistake. You survived. All your teammates survived. Your family survived. Your friends survived. Nobody's even in the hospital, though I expect some of those joint shots Hinata landed will twinge for a few days - jyūken strikes are a raging bitch-and-a-half even when they aren't being used to tear your eyeball out with chakra-adhered elbow strikes to the temple. Ughck."

    "When they what?" Hazō exclaimed involuntarily.

    "More importantly," Jiraiya continued, "you now have the opportunity to learn from that mistake, at the pitiful price of a little bit of pride. So be it. Cast your pride into the furnace, and become stronger. Go improve your other ninjutsu. Go become so fast on your feet nobody will ever touch you again. Go train with the Water Dragon Bullet until you can maintain it for dozens of attacks. Go learn everything Sunny knows and then some. Go learn to charm the pants off of Tailed Beasts. Go do whatever you believe will actually make you succeed, by whatever means necessary."

    Noburi pursed his lips and swallowed, steadying his voice against the rising tide of Jiraiya's sheer presence. "Sir, yes sir," he managed with a sharp nod.

    The aura diminished. "Good man. Hazō, whatever it is, spit it out before you choke on it."

    "You mentioned a budget to refill Keiko's chocolate ammunition, sir. We can probably handle that - we ended up profiting almost five-hundred-thousand ryō from our day in the Yak house."

    "Not bad," Jiraiya said, rubbing his chin. "You send a nice bottle of alcohol to the Oyabun yet?"

    "We'll add it to the list, sir."

    "You and your lists. Okay, next?"

    "I wanted to broach the subject of using part of that haul to incentivize till-n-fill missions. I've been using a portion of my own spending money on it, hoping to get more Leaf shinobi into the habit. Then I got an idea when Noburi was discussing with Tsunade how to incentivize mass mednin training - maybe we can clear a bottleneck by making sure towns know there are funds available to hire ninja for projects. With Keiko's logistics expertise, we might be able to use the Fire Daimyo's bureaucrats to figure out a good way to distribute information and access to credit among village headmen. With more missions available, it would become a more normal thing to do, and nin-sensei could use till-n-fills as bridges between D-ranks and more serious missions outside the village."

    "I like it," Jiraiya said after a moment. "I would be tempted to have you kids start sponsoring merchants or buying up shops first, though. We can discuss more when we get home how we want to balance the momentum and reputational boost of doing things now versus investing in ventures to be able to fund more things later."

    Hazō nodded. "Finally, about Kotsuzui. Is he likely to... cause problems, since Mist and Hot Springs are so intertwined at this point?"

    Jiraiya grimaced and made a series of handseals. "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" An identical Jiraiya sprang into existence next to the original, and the pair ran around double-checking seals and adding more. The clone ran off into the woods.

    "So, bad news and good news," Jiraiya began. "Ōnoki has hinted that one of their jōnin, Komori, is present and may be taking a special interest in you kids. Noburi and Keiko, the fact you guys used summons and new jutsu was actually helpful there. So Hazou should avoid using MEW, just for reference. The good news is Ren doesn't want Rock to be able to pull that particular leverage at this time, so even if Kotsuzui or one of his relatives knows has something, they won't reveal it. Probably. Or at least, they'd be going over Mist's head to do so."

    "Troublesome," Keiko muttered from around a mouth of chocolate-dipped berries.

    "You said it. I'm glad you and Shikamaru are continuing to find your mutual expenditure of time building connection in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship to be worthwhile, by the way," Jiraiya teased.

    "Whatever makes you say such things," Keiko deadpanned.

    "Uh, so," Hazō interjected. "Are there things I could do to help mitigate this? If I can't use MEW, fine, but I'm going to need taijutsu unless I can get around the ban on exotic seals. Maybe by infusing them during the match?"

    "Nah, the rules were specifically worded," Jiraiya said, waving a hand. "No use, not no 'carrying' or 'bringing'. You could infuse an explosive in the field if you wanted to impress some of the cleverer people, but honestly, those are the people you don't want knowing all you can do. Athoooooough… you could always use a macerator and claim it was a storage seal, as long as you were moving your hand when you launched it. It would need to be a lower-velocity one, with minimum stress, so none of your fancy aerial dispersal stuff, but if you want to fling logs and rocks at the guy, I think you could get away with it. If you're really feeling mean, throw some of Mari's cooking. Palm the seal, though, don't show off the rings."

    "What about blood?" Hazō asked. "Maybe I could overwhelm his senses. That's supposed to work on Inuzuka, right?"

    "Eeeh, kind of," Jiraiya said, wiggling a hand. "They tend to overplay that so they'll be underestimated. Blood would be hard to deploy in a wide area without obvious macerator use. Maybe if you put it in clay jars and launched it? Hmmm..." Jiraiya put a hand to his chin and stared into the surrounding trees for several long seconds before a small cough from Keiko brought him back to reality. "Ah, sorry. Honestly, I'd leave it be. Punch the crap out of him, claw him, hit him with big rocks, get it done. Fast and clean. Better public relations, as well."

    "Okay," Hazō assented, somewhat disappointed. "Speaking of public relations… any tips on a prefight speech?"

    Jiraiya's eyes lit up. "You want advice from the Great Toad Sage on making dramatic speeches? My dear boy, you have come to the best possible place! Now, the most important thing is that not only are you better than them, but you know you're better than them, and you know that they know it too, even if they won't admit it to themselves. Anything they say is cute because they are small. Listen to me very carefully: Kotsuzui is basically a clan-spoiled academy brat before his first taijutsu lesson with someone who isn't being paid to pamper him."

    "Hmmm. So, just to check, throwing a firelog macerator out over the quarry as part of shrugging off the restrictions on our equipment - thumbs up or thumbs down?"

    -o-o-​

    "So, I think I'm biased toward my mother," Hazō said as the team finished setting up their room's seals for the night.

    "I would expect so. She is your mother," Keiko observed neutrally.

    "Somethin' happen?" asked Noburi sleepily from his bed.

    "I was worried about what Aunt Ren might have done, and went to see Momma," said Hazō. "She said some stuff that I found myself agreeing with in person, but not once I really gave it some thought."

    Keiko sighed and plopped down onto her bunk with her back to the wall, folding her legs and closing her eyes in a meditative position. "Troublesome. Very well, explain."

    As Hazō related the events of his visit to the Kurosawa compound, he felt a coil of stress releasing from under his diaphragm. It felt good to share his worries, even if he didn't yet know if doing so would fix anything.

    "I know I was wrong to be judgmental to her after all she's gone through. But she ignored what I was actually saying. Her actions in Leaf were selfish, and risky. Is she just… justifying herself, to herself? It was so easy to believe her, in the moment," he concluded.

    "It is convenient for her to believe as she does, so she does," said Keiko, almost as if reciting a mantra. "She says you have lost nothing since your father died? Only if we neglect years spent away from her and constantly fearing for your life."

    "I'm with Keiko," Noburi chimed in. "Your mom frames her situation as needing to fight to protect the second chance you two have with each other. Right now, that makes Jiraiya and Mari enemies. Maybe some day you can show her they're on our side, but for now you might just have to cope with a really angry momma-shark."

    Hazō took a deep breath. "Okay. Thanks for letting me get that all off my chest, and thank you for the perspective. Can I ask you guys for one more favor?"

    "Good gods man, you have to sleep at some point!" Noburi moaned, flopping back on his cot.

    "I know, I know, but since I'm expecting Kotsuzui to badmouth me, and Momma, and you guys, and our life choices, maybe you guys should insult me as preparation."

    Noburi propped himself up on his elbows. "This is the problem with you, Hazō. You know you aren't good enough, so you waste time obsessively getting ready for things you're going to fail at no matter how hard you try."

    "Woah, hey-"

    "Indeed. Perhaps, had he grown up with a reliable father figure like his clan wanted him to, he would not have so little confidence. And so little competence," Keiko agreed. "Instead, he was spawned from clanless scum and, worse, scum who abandoned her family because she could not keep her pants on. That is, assuming the clanless scum was actually his father, though given his mother's proclivities who really knows."

    "Okay, look, I know I asked for-"

    "Bad blood will out, you know, and my clan knows all about blood," continued Noburi, really warming up to it now. He stood up and strode over to Hazō. "Hey Kuros- oh, sorry it's supposed to be 'Gōketsu' now, what a stupid, pretentious, bullshit name, I can't keep things straight with how fast you and yours give up on family ties whenever its convenient for you. Want me to get a whiff of you and your parents' blood and check if you're really related? Oh wait, can't do that, your useless failure of a father got himself killed. That is, assuming he didn't just abandon you when he got tired of raising a failure. I guess we could go check all of your whore mother's buddies one by one and use process of elimination."

    Hazō saw red, and sprang to his feet to put a finger against Noburi's chest. "Shut up! Shut your damn lying mouth!"

    Noburi slowly raised his hands to Hazō's shoulders as Hazō got his breathing back under control and fought back tears. "I'm sorry," Noburi said after a quiet minute. "Kotsuzui won't be, though. You'll have to jump in more quickly if you want to cut him off or throw him off the trail."

    "You're right," Hazō ground out. "Fine. Again."


    This plan covered only the evening, so +2 XP. Brevity XP +1 as per new policy.

    Noburi has agreed to spread some coin around getting people to chant for you in the banter phase. You can Tag both "Money Talks" and "Toad Sage Tactics" as part of an Intimidation Maneuver during the banter - success gets you a Tag on a relevant roll during the first round of combat.

    Voting ends Saturday at 9am New York Time. Please include battle and banter tactics. Check with @eaglejarl as to whether they should be separate votes.
     
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    • OliWhail said:
    This plan covered only the evening, so +1 XP. Brevity XP +3 (I think).

    Noburi has agreed to spread some coin around getting people to chant for you in the banter phase. You can Tag both "Money Talks" and "Toad Sage Tactics" as part of an Intimidation Maneuver during the banter - success gets you a Tag on a relevant roll during the first round of combat.
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    I dont think we got XP for the rest of the day, so that comes out millhouse.

    Also: Great news on the tags!

    Also: LMAO.
     
    OliWhail said:
    Noburi has agreed to spread some coin around getting people to chant for you in the banter phase. You can Tag both "Money Talks" and "Toad Sage Tactics" as part of an Intimidation Maneuver during the banter - success gets you a Tag on a relevant roll during the first round of combat.
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    glances at Hazou's Intimidation

    Hm. I don't suppose we could roll Sealing as Intimidation if we used Fire-Log Macerators in the opening sequence?
     
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