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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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I figured out how to defeat Keiko and Ami in the next match.

First we buy another black kitty toy, preferably with blue eyes, then we bribe some ANBU to locate Ami during the tournament and proceed to gift it to her, telling everyone that we gifted Keiko one too.

Also we need to remind Keiko that killing us is against the rules.
 
HAZOU: One last thing before we begin.

KEIKO: What is it?

HAZOU: I was secretly the leader of the Goketsu Keiko Fan Club all along. *substitutes to arena*

Easy aspect. And she can't kill us during the match. Probably.

MMKII said:
Bah, I'm sure it'll be fine. Afterall, it's not like anyone is going to test how damaging this is under these exact conditions in the near future. Unless Kotsuzui wants to volunteer himself and we provide the same explosives and one decently combat stressed Hazou. :p


I'm tempted to chalk this up to Keiko and Jiraiya being overly paranoid. Thinking on it, I'm not entirely sure that "Two explosions happen and kid comes out one explosion damaged." leads into "The kid has one of the holy grails of ninja combat." and not "Something ain't right there. Perhaps he did something clever.Did he really get hit by both? Were they explosives? If so, were they standard ones or some Sealmaster bullshit? Maybe he just got lucky?" once you filter it through an Occams Razor/Look Underneath the Underneath perspective, but your mileage may vary.


At the end of the day, its not like it makes us much more of a target than Keiko is for being a Genin with a summoning scroll.
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I actually think Jiraiya is being suitably cautious. He's not pulling Hazou out of the tournament and preparing for the Fourth Great Ninja War. Instead, he's looking at all the possibilities and trying to guard against the worst-cases without alerting any parties that haven't noticed anything. Keiko *is* being overly paranoid, and Hazou successfully calls her out on it.
 
It occurs to me that if we can't prep the arena, why not get the crowd to do it for us?

We already have the crowd on our side since our match, and I'm sure they remember the beat we gave them. Why not use our little song again for some light shenanigans?

I know folks are against psych warfare, but we'd be using a resource we already cultivated (crowd participation) to throw Keiko off balance. And the upside is that it wouldn't be a personal attack on her.
 
OK I know this is probably a bad idea...but I suddenly have the urge to claim that Hazou wrapped himself inside the Pangolin Summoning Scroll as defense.
 
Roomba said:
Again, you joke, but Hazou suddenly declaring his love for Ami during the match would absolutely give us a massive, if brief, psychological advantage.
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So I thought about this some more and there is really only one possible outcome if we decide to do this.

Summary of Chapter 240: Keiko vs Hazou​

Keiko, enraged by Hazou's clumsy attempts of courting her sister, breaks his Everything during the match. Unfortunately, that includes his mind. He is no longer capable of uplifting the world, let alone lift up his arm unassisted.


After reflecting on her actions, Keiko uses her Kunai of Repentance on herself and bleeds out in a dark room all alone. She is not sad however, because this is a better end than she thinks she deserves.


Jiraiya, realizing that he can no longer keep the Hat with two of his children dead or incapacitated - and with Leaf ejected out of the tournament - attempts an alpha strike on the Hyuuga, mortally wounding Hiashi and many other Hyuuga. Unfortunately, he is chased off by the ANBU and remaining Hyuuga forces before he can finish the job.
Leaf Intelligence reports that Jiraiya has been spotted traveling to Rice for unknown reasons.

(The sole Mist genin wins the tournament without fighting a single match by virtue of being the only remaining candidate that did not get disqualified.)


In the chaos, World War 4 breaks out, accelerating the decline of humanity.

The light of mankind is fading.


Kagome hears about The Tragedy of the Mist Tournament and takes revenge on Leaf. The property damage and civilian deaths caused by his rampage rivals The Night of the Kyuubi - which is odd since Kagome is taken down nearly immediately. Yet, for more than two weeks afterwards random spots in Leaf would spontaneously explode killing many innocents, destroying many historical sites and leaving the whole of Leaf in a heightened state of paranoia.


Akane's response is a lot more measured and restrained for she is and has been dead for a while.


Mari, defenseless in her current state of mind, is taken to T&I. She offers no resistance and never comes back.


Noburi, the only remaining active member of Team Uplift, finds out that there is such a thing as chakra water poisoning as he gets hospitalized in Mist for trying to drink away his sorrows. His sisters find out about this and visit him, though they are so unsettled by the sight of Noburi's empty stare at a black plush kitten in his hands that they never try to contact him again.
They burn said plush kitten he gave them as a gift to remember him by.


As Kagome's student, Honoka is also taken to T&I. She does come back, though the parts of her that do only superficially resemble the person she used to be.
(Haru curses Hazou for this as well.)


Hinata, having seen her father, aunts and uncles killed in front of her, grows up to be a bitter person who leads the Hyuuga with an Iron Fist (the irony of this is not lost to Hanabi though she is smart enough not to say this out loud where her sister can hear). She no longer trusts anyone but herself.


Kurosawa Hana, no longer useful to the powers that be, dies in an unfortunate accident. Who knew that one can actually encounter real sharks in Mist bath tubs?

Kurosawa Ren is no longer smiling.


Without the steady supply of Skytower seals, the Pangolin conquest comes to a stop. They are ultimately pushed back and defeated by a coalition of other clans and destroyed completely. Unfortunately, it appeared like the Pangolins were the only thing keeping down the Honey Badger populations who now have taken over the Seventh Path and are working on a way to invade the Human Path. Jashin have mercy on us should they succeed.


Zabuza is perfectly fine and lives a long, fulfilled life.


Gasai Yuno dies a spinster, hopes of her prince Noburi coming back to court her crushed. The only thing Noburi is currently capable of courting is a barrel of rum. (Tsunade is oh so proud of him.)


Mori Ami finds all of these happenings hilarious.

She decides to carry around the paralyzed Hazou around like a sack of potatoes for 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.

It does not work out.
 
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Roomba said:
HAZOU: One last thing before we begin.

KEIKO: What is it?

HAZOU: I was secretly the leader of the Goketsu Keiko Fan Club all along. *substitutes to arena*

Easy aspect. And she can't kill us during the match. Probably.
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The question you have to ask is the same one Keiko did. How confident are you that the other person will correctly identify the course of action that benefits them most and choose to follow it?
 
*someone asks Hazou about how he tanked those explosives*

Hazou: low strength explosive tags.

*Incredulity that training tags could do so much damage*

Hazou: we literally use explosive tags to help us chop firewood. You think I don't have an array of finely tuned explosive tags of different intensities?​

Back this up with a variety of tag intensities in our next fight, and we're pretty solid.
 
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Jello_Raptor said:
*someone asks Hazou about how he tanked those explosives*

Hazou: low strength explosive tags.

*Incredulity that training tags could do so much damage*

Hazou: we literally use explosive tags to help us chop firewood. You think I don't have an array of finely tuned explosive tags of different intensities?​

Back this up with a variety of tag intensities in our next fight, and we're pretty solid.
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What if no one directly asks us though? A lot of our ideas are based on the idea that people will be asking us how we did it. It's also possible that anyone who notices will assume that it's top secret, and not ask us because they think we'll just try to mislead them. That leaves them free to speculate all they want.
 
Sentient Tree said:
What if no one directly asks us though? A lot of our ideas are based on the idea that people will be asking us how we did it. It's also possible that anyone who notices will assume that it's top secret, and not ask us because they think we'll just try to mislead them. That leaves them free to speculate all they want.
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Then we just use different tag intensities in the next fight and those people get to feel clever about figuring out our secret, and more confident that Leaf hasn't figured out one of the ninja holy grail techniques. (Mmm the irony, the delicious delicious irony)​
 
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You know, with the way Shikaku talked during our first meeting, one of the holy grails ought to have been some way to cheat ninjutsu range to bypass the chakra dispersion effect.
 
MMKII said:
Alternatively:

PERSON: How did you not die?

HAZOU: Clan secrets.

PERSON 2: Yeah right, suuuure.

HAZOU: *shrugs* Take it up with the Kurosawa if you want to know more.

(Fuck you Auntie Ren)
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The Iron Nerve: Iron Muscles

Using special training along with his explosive using sealing teacher, Hazou has figured out how to make his muscles harden up and be as hard as iron at the cost of not being able to move while the technique is in effect. It's totally not Tekkai from One Piece, I promise. :p
 
Velorien said:
Shikaku: [looks at skywalkers and pangolin armour] He chose... poorly.
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Velorien said:
"The manpower requirement would be prohibitive," Shikaku cut him off. "But my concern is suicide bombers. That is why I'm asking about chakra diffusion. I take it your solution involves sealcrafting?"
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While we didn't solve the problem of preventing suicide bombing, Hazou (and everyone in Goketsu, execpt barrel boy mabe) can suicide bomb and survive. (at least the non-lethal tags)

:>
 
Hey!

I finally caught up with this quest again after seeing it pop up on r/rational recently. I had lost interest in it during the Great Transition of game mechanics a while back, so I had about one year worth of material to consume!

I may write a more specific and in-depth post detailing my overall impressions later on, but for now I just wanna say that I really enjoyed these deliciously binge-able updates. The story and the characters are in a very interesting place right now and I feel lucky that I managed to hop in just as things are starting to really ramp-up with the tournament, upcoming election and intricate character dynamics all coming together.

Back when I was regularly following this quest I rarely if ever contributed to the thread. I would like to be more active this time around, but the planning process always seemed a bit daunting to me, so we'll see if that works out.

Thanks to the QMs for the fantastic work and to the players for contributing to this amazing story!
 
  • Those clearly weren't max intensity tags. Sealmaster. I use explosives to chop firewood for godsake. Those were the distraction.
    • Used the opportunity to catch him with a crushing bear hug right before they went off.
    • *Snort* Guy probably won't like admitting he almost got hugged to death.
 
MMKII said:
  • Those clearly weren't max intensity tags. Sealmaster. I use explosives to chop firewood for godsake. Those were the distraction.
    • Used the opportunity to catch him with a crushing bear hug right before they went off.
    • *Snort* Guy probably won't like admitting he almost got hugged to death.
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Wouldn't the ground take lasting damage if they were max intensity tags? Isn't that something that could be easily verified one way or the other?
 
faflec said:
Wouldn't the ground take lasting damage if they were max intensity tags? Isn't that something that could be easily verified one way or the other?
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I am not a ballistics expert so who knows. Probably?

Say, could we learn Needle Jizou from Jiraiya and use it vs Keiko? It seems to be the sort of thing that would help in the situation and we could just imply we used it to tank the explosive. Doesn't look to be a regular old armor jutsu either.
 
I've found a perfect way to cover up the Ghost Scales OPSEC breach. It involves a date with Ikeda.

It's simple: Hazou approaches Ikeda, attempts to woo her. Since we've both won our matches by shelling our own positions, it would make sense for him to brag about that in an attempt to bond. Due to his teenage stupidity, he will end up babbling a little too much, "revealing" how he did that: [insert one of our deceptions here]. (If we're lucky (okay, we're not), by this point she'll have been independently ordered by her Kage to try and get that information out of Hazou.)

Once Ikeda is informed, the secret will be out for any interested parties to discover. We could help it along by bragging to Noburi about how we seduced Ikeda by our badass performance, or having Keiko yell at us a little too loudly about OPSEC, or pissing Ikeda off so that she tries to sell our secret to our competition, et cetera.

It's a perfect plan that cannot possibly go wrong. (Unless Ikeda has better Deceit. But she doesn't, right?)
 
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Velorien said:
"You know what's worse? She's nothing like Keiko. I mean that. I still half-wonder if one of them was adopted. Even if it's a façade, she's warm and open and a smooth conversationalist, and she's confident enough for a one-on-one with a Kage who's pissed with her for hurting his daughter and trying to get valuable political information out of her at the same time. Also, either she thinks on her feet or she's crazy prepared. Knowing the Frozen Skein, I guess it's the latter, though nobody should be prepared for the damn Hokage turning up on their doorstep in the night.

"And she's nice. Nice and friendly and polite and there are times when you just want to put your hands around her neck and choke her and you can't pin down a reason why. And you probably shouldn't choke her because she's playing politics at the Kage level and has blackmail material on you and may or may not be representing a mystery third faction that will destabilise Mist if she dies. And when you try to negotiate with her one-on-one, she dances around the questions and acts like you have to earn her trust when she's just some upstart young jōnin who doesn't even have her clan's formal backing. I was promised a ninja without initiative!
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Ah.

Velorien said:
And you probably shouldn't choke her because she's playing politics at the Kage level and has blackmail material on you and may or may not be representing a mystery third faction that will destabilise Mist if she dies.
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Of course.

Velorien said:
blackmail material
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Ami destroyed Jiraiya's network and probably killed Minami. (Or someone else from her faction, but with our luck...)
 
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