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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Roomba said:
How did we even get to a situation where this is a reasonable question to ask?
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Because Ami, obviously. I've updated our plan accordingly:
Noumero said:
  • If everything goes well:
    • Move back to the shore. Have a picnic, make small-talk. Act more relaxed and friendly.
      • Do not forget the precommitments.
      • (Is it cold outside? Plagiarize ISC: bring chairs, a table, warm blankets, an iron barrel filled with fuel, socks filled with heated sand. (And food.))
    • Important (relatively): Ask whether she played board games. If no, is she interested?
      • Mind the innuendos.
    • Make a cryptic remark about chronology breaking down around her. Don't elaborate.
    • Hand her a post-interaction survey.
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Interlude: Tears of Red
  • Threadmarks
    • Interlude: Tears of Red​

    "I swear, Grandfather," Yuri threw up her hands, "it's like he's stalking me! This is the third time the target got away because I was busy fighting him!"

    "Senju dogs!" Grandfather spat. "Not a scrap of honour among them. While you were away, Bunkichi learned his name: Senju Ryōma, the last glaive-wielder they have left after the Battle of Fukō. Would that he had perished with the rest of them!

    "But be careful, Granddaughter. It may be a coward's weapon, but he's been killing men with polearms since he was eight years old."

    Yuri shrugged. "So he started two years earlier. I'm an adult Uchiha now. He wouldn't be fit to lick my sandals if he lived to be a hundred."

    "So much fire in you," Grandfather chuckled, "just like your mother. She'd be so proud."

    "Thank you, Grandfather," Yuri said, glowing on the inside. "I'll bring you his head on a plate, see if I don't."

    -o-​

    "Well, if it isn't the little mantis," Senju sneered. "Too bad this bounty's mine. Again."

    "Mantis, am I? Well, you'll be praying for mercy soon enough. Did you forget how I almost had you last time?"

    Senju gave an exaggerated yawn. Against a lesser enemy, like a Hara or an Inuzuka, she'd have taken the opening, and he'd be dead before he hit the ground. But she knew Senju well enough to know when he was baiting her. The second she tried to move in, that glaive would come up, and she'd be cut in half before she could react.

    "What's the matter, Uchiha? Trying to kill me with your razor wit?"

    "You're too dense for my cutting remarks," Yuri said. "Now, how about you stop trying to talk me to death, and we settle this before the renegade escapes from both of us. Again.

    "Fire Element: Relentless Flames Technique!"

    Her shortswords were in her hands the second she finished the final seal. She'd need to follow through fast—that Senju armour was good at deflecting blows, and she had to press her advantage while Senju was too busy dodging the technique.

    Her warrior instincts warned her at the last moment, and she slipped into a forward slide right as Senju's glaive swept across where she'd been. He must have been training to defend against her ninjutsu after she nearly burned off his arm last time.

    But post-sweep was when he was most vulnerable, and his glaive would still be horizontal. Yuri, at his knee level, readied her swords. One to knock the plate away, the other to go right through his manhood. Let the Senju scum laugh at her then. Her blades lashed out, only for her to realise too late that—

    -o-​

    "How much longer is he going to keep doing this?!" Yuri exclaimed, pacing back and forth across Grandfather's hut. "I feel like I've spent my entire life fighting him when it's barely been a year!"

    "I understand how you feel, Granddaughter," Grandfather said wearily. "I understand it very well because you spend an hour ranting about him every time you get back. Can you not just kill him and get it over with?"

    "I will next time," Yuri muttered. "He only got away today because my foot slipped."

    "You know," Grandfather said thoughtfully, "we could just get a few men together and lure him into a trap like we did with that Kazuma boy. The Senju have been getting complacent these last few months."

    Yuri spun around. "Never!" she roared. "The Senju dog is mine!"

    -o-​

    "Not you again, little mantis. Are you so besotted with me that you just can't stay away?" Senju pulled his glaive from his back like a bored chef bringing out the soup ladle, leisurely and infuriating.

    "No, I just want to cut that ego of yours down to size, and I figured I should start early since it's an all-day job." Yuri twirled her swords in the lazy, casual movement she'd been practising ever since their last fight. "Tell me, which part would you like me to cut off first?"

    "I know which one you're really after," Senju grinned, "but I'm afraid it might be too big for you. Want to come find out?"

    Every time Yuri thought she'd reached the limits of how much one person could piss her off...

    "Fine, then," she hissed. "Let's find out how much of a man you really are.

    "Fire Element: Final Conflagration Technique!"

    She flared her chakra, flashing into position to the right of the pillar of fire. She moved through it to the left, slashing as she went, trusting in her pre-cast protection to keep her unharmed as she finished Senju off. Her blades came down through the hellfire—and Senju pulled her into a bear hug, getting inside both her reach and her protective aura.

    For a very long second, the two gazed into each other's eyes.

    Her knee to the groin connected at the same time as his headbutt.

    -o-​

    Yuri hated feeling this way. It was intrusive and painful and it didn't make sense. Spending hours dwelling on her endless battles with the Senju scumbag was nothing new, but now she just couldn't get him out of her head. That arrogant, bull-headed, smirking, giant-weapon-overcompensating pig! She'd dunked her head into several bowls of freezing cold water, and it hadn't made her feel any less mad.

    But right at the point when she was ready to beat her head against the wall, the realisation finally hit her. Of course they kept clashing over and over for two years straight. Of course he'd been the one to awaken her Sharingan. Of course she was obsessing over every detail of his looks and the way he moved. It was something perfectly natural, nay, expected, of a woman her age.

    She'd found her fated rival.

    How had she not seen it before? So many of her peers had craved this very thing, only to die before they found the one. And Yuri had nearly missed it. Two of her precious fourteen years spent fighting Ryōma as if he was any other hated Senju, not realising what she really had. She should have felt ashamed at her obliviousness. Instead, she was elated. They were meant to be together.

    She'd still kill him the second she had the chance, of course—mercilessly and with massive Fire Element overkill. But this way it would be destiny.

    -o-​

    "Fated rivals?" Ryōma laughed. "More like you're my fated footrest. Or your rapidly-cooling corpse will be, anyway."

    "Fated footrest?" Yuri growled. "Is that how you see me, Ryōma? Then I guess I'd better put an end to our rivalry here and now—the traditional way!"

    "Now since when have we been on first-name terms?" Ryōma asked bemusedly.

    That… was a very valid question. When did she start thinking of him like that? And when was the ground going to swallow her for saying it to his face?

    "What the hell," Ryōma(!) said. "Let's roll with it, Yuri."

    He knew her name. He knew her name. Why did he know her name? And why did that make her heart beat so fast?

    "So can I get on with killing you now?" he asked.

    The sheer embarrassment still coursing through her veins, she almost said, "Please."

    -o-​

    I hate you. I want you to die for what you've done to me. I want to take the Fire Element and burn you to ashes, just like you've taken my heart and burned it to ashes. Tell me how I'm supposed to live from now on, knowing that you're still not dead.

    The words poured out from her, but even after imprisoning them in her personal scroll, she still didn't feel any lighter. He'd called her name and now she was bound to him, longing for her worst enemy, knowing that she couldn't cut herself free. What was she supposed to do? She couldn't turn to her clansmen with this. He was Senju, one of the cursed Senju that murdered her loved ones generation after generation… and now he was her loved one, and there was no escape. Why couldn't she have killed him before it was too late?

    Tomorrow she'd be sent on her next mission. A merchant was ferrying iron to the Senju. He couldn't be allowed to reach his destination. The caravan was going to pass close to Uchiha territory, and he was going to be there. There wasn't a shadow of a doubt in her mind. He would be there and it would be her only opportunity to be with him, even if it was merely in mortal combat.

    -o-​

    She hadn't been back from their fight on the castle ramparts for five minutes before her father found her. His expression was colder than ice.

    "You will explain."

    Yuri's heart stopped. He was holding her personal scroll, unfurled to the section with her most agonised, pleading poems. She'd referred to Ryōma by name.

    "I-It's not what it looks like, Father! I was… I was…"

    Manipulation and deception weren't Yuri's strong suit. She lacked subtlety and couldn't hold back her feelings, which was why she was only sent on combat missions.

    "It was calligraphy practice! I wasn't trying to write 'Ryōma'; I didn't even realise that was how you spelled his name!"

    "Daughter," Father said tensely, "I never said anything about Ryōma."

    They wouldn't have to execute her. She was going to kill herself here and now.

    "Do you realise the magnitude of the sin you've committed?" Father exploded. "To express love for the clan's mortal enemy, to want to give yourself to him? The Senju killed your uncle, woman! They killed your cousins! They killed your grandmother!"

    "I-I know, Father! Do you think I don't know that he's a child of liars and murderers and honourless dogs that should have been strangled at birth?"

    "And yet you want him to"—Father made a show of checking the scroll—"fill you to the brim with his curse so that in your sweet surrender you will no longer be torn in twain'?"

    The only reason Yuri didn't immolate herself on the spot was that her hands were trembling too badly to make seals.

    With a flick of his wrist, Father cast the scroll into the campfire.

    "It seems his 'curse' is already in you, Daughter. By rights, I should throw you in to join your poems.

    "But you have served the clan well, and I will give you one chance to redeem yourself. You know what must be done."

    She knew what must be done.

    "The taint in your heart will not outlive the tainter. Come back with his head, Yuri… or not at all."

    Yuri was not subtle, but she knew her father. There was anger hidden in his face, but also pain. She understood what he was risking, allowing his traitorous daughter to walk out of the camp alive. She understood how much he trusted her.

    "I will not fail you, Father."

    -o-​

    How long had it been? Their blades had first clashed in the early morning. Now, in the corner of her eye she could see the sun begin to rise again. Her breath did not come easily to her, and she had to force her hands to close around the grips of her weapons. And of course, she bore a thousand minor wounds.

    Ryōma was doing no better. Occasionally, the blade of his glaive would droop, exposing his shoulder. Yuri would lunge, knowing that in that second she could inflict a crippling, even fatal, wound. At the last moment, her treacherous hand would turn the sword aside. Then she would stagger, exhausted by the movement, and only barely deflect his counter.

    "Go home… little mantis…" Ryōma wheezed. "The prey's long gone… and I can chop you into salad… another day."

    "There will be… no other day," Yuri wheezed in response. "I will end you... right here."

    He grinned like a sleep-deprived madman. "I like a girl… with spirit."

    That earned him another attempted stabbing, but she couldn't help giving a brief smile.

    "I bet you say that… to all the girls…"

    A chop of the glaive. An X-block. A blade guided downwards, followed by a sidestep and retaliation. Hands slowing down just a little bit. Ryōma leaning out of the way.

    "Just the ones… who try to kill me." He paused. "So… most girls."

    She snerked. Her guard softened briefly, and he thrust at her side. He was too slow.

    "If that's the best you can do… with that big weapon of yours… I'm not surprised."

    His smile. The sparkle in his eyes. The way he could still banter after all the cuts she'd inflicted on him.

    Yuri finally understood what her heart was telling her. Why she couldn't finish him, even when she could.

    If what she'd been given really was a choice, then… 'not at all'.

    She raised her swords, crouched—then sprang straight at Ryōma with all her remaining strength.

    With her Sharingan, she could see his glaive thrusting for her chest before it happened.

    She didn't dodge.

    "Strange…" she said dazedly, staring at the blade piercing through her. "It doesn't hurt… as much… as I thought…"

    Ryōma dropped the glaive, the motion sending waves of pain through her, and rushed over to her.

    "Idiot!" he shouted. "What the hell kind of move was that? Did you even think what you were doing?"

    "Shouldn't you… be happy?" she slurred. "You finally got what you wanted."

    "Not like this! You think this… this cruel joke is the ending I hoped for?!"

    She struggled to focus on his face.

    "I had to," she said. "Even at the end… you were too clumsy to kill me."

    He didn't smile.

    "Why, Yuri?"

    She was in his arms, being lowered carefully to the ground. She didn't know when that started, but it felt… nice. Restful.

    "You really are… dense," she said. "I'm in love with you. Maybe I always was."

    "I'm dense?" he gave a melancholy smile. "I love you too, little mantis. I found my way to you every time I could."

    Suddenly, she wanted to live. Desperately, hopelessly, to live. To stay in this moment forever.

    But she couldn't feel her body anymore.

    She reached up with hands growing numb. She stroked his cheek. She tried to pull him closer.

    He leaned down, still holding her, and looked into her eyes.

    She felt his lips on hers.​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Kiba said:
    I am confused. What were we supposed to vote on again?
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    What to do after the tournament would be a good idea. Do you want to:

    • Stay in Mist?
    • Go to Mountain?
    • Go on a tour of the Element Nations...
      • In order to interact with the peasants? How?
      • As guards for a traveling merchant?
      • As part of the guard force on a diplomatic mission?
    • Go back to Leaf...
      • And research? What?
      • And hire people to do till'n'fill missions?
      • And go on a tour of Fire? Why?
    • Something else
     
    Gamerlord said:
    Wait we're meant to remember things that happened that long ago?
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    No one's forcing you to. Interludes can be about anything in the MfDverse, or occasionally alternative timelines.
    Gamerlord said:
    Akane was in a hospital?
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    I get that you might have forgotten a detail like the song. But at the point where you forget that Akane spent the entirety of Team Uplift's first visit to Leaf in hospital due to nearly getting killed by Arikada's acid worms, and that the pivotal event of her and Hazō's mutual love confession happened in said hospital, I feel like you're just not paying attention.
     
    Gamerlord said:
    Goddamnit, can someone talk sense?!
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    • Regarding MadScientist:
      • Tears of Red is Akane's favourite music piece, which is based on a folk tale, which is based on the story from the latest interlude. It's tragic.
      • The last we saw of Akane, she was in the middle of a conflict with Tsunade, which Akane expected to result in her death. It's tragic.
      • Velorien is evil. As such, his posting this interlude could be seen as him reminding the playerbase that Akane is (probably) dead.
    • Regarding Tua:
      • The Kurosawa clan is an offshoot of the Uchiha clan.
      • Kurosawa Hana, mother of Hazou, tried to "cure" Mari by drowning her a little. Hana herself was then momentarily drowned by Jiraiya in turn.
      • After that, various ninja drowning people for various wacky reasons became a thread meme.
      • Uchiha Yuri, in this interlude, did things which called to mind said meme — and since she is Hana's ancestor, it implies that Hana got this from her Uchiha roots.
    (Just so we're clear: you now owe me the mother of all favours. Making sense isn't easy.)
     
    Velorien said:
    I get that you might have forgotten a detail like the song. But at the point where you forget that Akane spent the entirety of Team Uplift's first visit to Leaf in hospital due to nearly getting killed by Arikada's acid worms, and that the pivotal event of her and Hazō's mutual love confession happened in said hospital, I feel like you're just not paying attention.
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    Dude on this single browser window I have 55 tabs open. Each of those tabs is a story I have yet to read. I have another 12 widows which among them contain another 30 SV/SB/QQ quests/stories, 59 anime/manga tabs, 75 webcomic tabs, 53 book tabs and one window devoted entirely to the SCP website. This is the stuff I have not read yet. The list of things which I have read is miles longer. I may love MfD and be really excited when it updates, but I have way too much rolling around in my noggin for little details like that to come back easily. It takes a while and a few sharp strikes to the temple first. There's a reason when people come back from hiatuses I always advocate doing a 'last time on X' segment; there's just too much out there for us to keep it all straight otherwise.
    Noumero said:
    • Regarding MadScientist:
      • Tears of Red is Akane's favourite music piece, which is based on a folk tale, which is based on the story from the latest interlude. It's tragic.
      • The last we saw of Akane, she was in the middle of a conflict with Tsunade, which Akane expected to result in her death. It's tragic.
      • Velorien is evil. As such, his posting this interlude could be seen as him reminding the playerbase that Akane is (probably) dead.
    • Regarding Tua:
      • The Kurosawa clan is an offshoot of the Uchiha clan.
      • Kurosawa Hana, mother of Hazou, tried to "cure" Mari by drowning her a little. Hana herself was then momentarily drowned by Jiraiya in turn.
      • After that, various ninja drowning people for various wacky reasons became a thread meme.
      • Uchiha Yuri, in this interlude, did things which called to mind said meme — and since she is Hana's ancestor, it implies that Hana got this from her Uchiha roots.
    (Just so we're clear: you now owe me the mother of all favours. Making sense isn't easy.)
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    You sir are wonderful.
     
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    Gamerlord said:
    Dude on this single browser window I have 55 tabs open. Each of those tabs is a story I have yet to read. I have another 12 widows which among them contain another 30 SV/SB/QQ quests/stories, 59 anime/manga tabs, 75 webcomic tabs, 53 book tabs and one window devoted entirely to the SCP website. This is the stuff I have not read yet. The list of things which I have read is miles longer. I may love MfD and be really excited when it updates, but I have way too much rolling around in my noggin for little details like that to come back easily. It takes a while and a few sharp strikes to the temple first. There's a reason when people come back from hiatuses I always advocate doing a 'last time on X' segment; there's just too much out there for us to keep it all straight otherwise.
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    That is a lot of dedication to reading, and one crazy powerful browser. I retract my critical comment.
     
    Langevin said:
    Well, Shinji must have been a secret Uchiha, because Hazou's blood is even purer:
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    It was stated in the Team Downfall interlude that Hazou pretty much has the purest blood in the Kurosawa clan, somehow.

    He probably just looks a helluva lot like an Uchiha.

    E: Just says "child of the primary line descended from Kurosawa Nozdormu himself blah blah blah".

    Jury is out I guess
     
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