- Location
- Kiev, Ukraine
So Velorien will do two in a row? Welp, if that's the case, we should add actual Ami meeting stuff after investigation part.
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
So Velorien will do two in a row? Welp, if that's the case, we should add actual Ami meeting stuff after investigation part.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I believe we have to currently talk Keiko out of her horrifyingly fucked up world view -- at least a little bit --first.
Quite frankly, this is a great opportunity to really start putting nails in the coffin there, so I'm all for focusing on that.
DarkSideBard
Flying, without moving on
I think this is, full-stop, one of the most simultaneously terrifying and electrifying lines of dialogue I've ever read, ever. Something really worth screaming for, honestly.
- Location
- Italy
Guys....do you know what this means?
We're going all out!
The question is, how do we out-crazy the crazy jonin?
And, who is organizing the second date?(Sadly, i don't remember) Because if we are, we get to play with the setting, if not we are going to end giving the initiative to Ami, again.
- Location
- Kiev, Ukraine
I don't think sooo
I think she really needs some time to sort things out. Besides she will have quite stressfull celebration tomorrow. Now is just not the time IMO
e:
We're organizing and the preparations were specified in @Inferno Vulpix's cursed plan IIRC
walk on the bay to talk seriously, picnic on the beach for small talk and, probably, lots of innuendos, all that stuff.
We can change it though
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Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Jiraiya wouldn't explicitly ask us to "Do the thing." if there wasn't something we needed done right this moment.
- Location
- Kiev, Ukraine
I doubt he was referring to Keiko rather than to Ami. Even so, I would rather not torture Keiko more. Not today at least.
I propose asking @Roomba since he's the one, who guesses things right about Keiko
AMI: It's not like Hazou-chan to be late. I wonder where he--
(HAZOU enters, floating a foot off the ground, avatar mode glowy eyes, surrounded by an aura of SV-blue lightning.)
AMI: heck
(HAZOU enters, floating a foot off the ground, avatar mode glowy eyes, surrounded by an aura of SV-blue lightning.)
AMI: heck
- Location
- Potato land
I doubt he was referring to Keiko rather than to Ami. Even so, I would rather not torture Keiko more. Not today at least.
I propose asking @Roomba since hes the one, who guesses things right about Keiko
I also understood Jiraiya's line as referring to Ami.
I kind of agree that we shouldn't push Keiko too much right now. She's had a rough few days, and is probably very tired of the constant high-stress social situations. We should give her some time to rest and process in peace.
I wouldn't mind Hazou making a declaration that he absolutely rejects the idea that Keiko is Ami's property, and that he's certainly not going to shy away from telling Ami what he thinks of her treatment of Keiko. But that, again, would be a declaration of intent, and not an effort to force Keiko to change her mind.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I think this would suffice but we could perhaps add a bit more to it than that.
I'll try my hand at putting something together later.
In the meantime:
Ami planning nao?
- Location
- Yes.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
@MadScientist? Hazou is hereby committed to pursuing necromancy.
Here's the old version of the Ami plan. I'll edit it somewhere within the next 12 hours to account for new information.
Wordcount: 472.
- Goals:
- Determine how serious Ami is about the marriage.
- Determine whether she is capable of treating you as a proper ally.
- To consider:
- Ami's marriage ploy was strangely aggressive, perhaps desperate. Combined with her previous fatalistic comments, could she be signalling that she is in trouble and needs assistance? You really don't want Keiko to deal with her death.
- Guidelines:
- Precommitments (overriding priority):
- Don't talk about OPSEC-sensitive topics. Don't bring up topics of uncertain confidentiality.
- Avoid commitments aside from those Jiraiya explicitly allowed you to make (if any).
- Maintain mental balance.
- Assume that all displays of emotions are deliberate — whether they're genuine or not. Watch out for mood whiplashes.
- Don't be intimidated by threats: they're bluffs (probably).
- Precommitments (overriding priority):
- Demeanour: calm but serious. Clothes: clan colours.
- Check everything below with Jiraiya.
- Meet in the pre-established location, then move to the waters for privacy. Split up to get there, if necessary.
- Employ Silence Mines (if approved).
- Have a backup ANBU discreetly watch you from the shore. Inform Ami of this.
- Start by establishing a scheme to confirm integrity of letters
- (Example: "nth letter of every sentence follows a pattern".)
- Wondering if Letter #1 was from a third party was a headache. Never again.
- Serious discussion:
- Guidelines:
- Don't let Ami sidetrack you, or continue obfuscating. Be direct.
- If she is still playing games: calmly say that you'll be waiting for her reply, leave.
- Topics:
- Does Ami want to join forces with you?
- For political as well as personal reasons, you're willing to use your status as the clan heir to argue for allying with her, marriage included if necessary. However, you'd need a clear statement of intent, with no further mindgames.
- Some of her actions suggest she is in danger. Does she need help?
- If she lies about this, you precommit to treat her as hostile in the future. Inform her of that.
- For political as well as personal reasons, you're willing to use your status as the clan heir to argue for allying with her, marriage included if necessary. However, you'd need a clear statement of intent, with no further mindgames.
- If Ami stated she'd like to work together, bring up Keiko:
- Whatever Ami did when they met, it left Keiko convinced she hates her. With Ami's level of control, you doubt it's unintentional. Is it true?
- Letter #1 hurt her. You're partially to blame, for not informing Keiko of the interaction in advance, but Ami is responsible too. Is she is going to treat her with disregard? If so, you're not sure you could be close allies.
- Does Ami want to join forces with you?
- Guidelines:
- 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.
- Move back to the shore. Have a picnic, make small-talk. Act more relaxed and friendly.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I think we should move on to planning the How of the Ami meeting and then actually go through with said meeting at the earliest opportunity.
All I can think of regarding how to do that is using loads of precommitments and not caring if plan length costs us an XP or two. Also, I would change "respecting Hazou as a partner" to "Respecting the Goketsu as a partner" because, frankly, Hazou is a genin with little experience in most of Ami's specialties. At best she can respect us as a person.
I guess the best would be to meet her at under relatively safe conditions, exchange basic polite pleasantries to establish that being nice to each other matters to us in general, clearly state what we don't want her to do during this meeting, speculate what we think she wants from us, clearly ask her what she wants from us (Hazou specifically and Goketsu as a whole), lay down our two basic conditions (base respect + explanation for Keiko), minutely remember everything she says or does and ultimately tell her that our clan will decide as a whole wether we agree to whatever proposals she has for us.
...Turns out there was more that I could think of than I thought.
All I can think of regarding how to do that is using loads of precommitments and not caring if plan length costs us an XP or two. Also, I would change "respecting Hazou as a partner" to "Respecting the Goketsu as a partner" because, frankly, Hazou is a genin with little experience in most of Ami's specialties. At best she can respect us as a person.
I guess the best would be to meet her at under relatively safe conditions, exchange basic polite pleasantries to establish that being nice to each other matters to us in general, clearly state what we don't want her to do during this meeting, speculate what we think she wants from us, clearly ask her what she wants from us (Hazou specifically and Goketsu as a whole), lay down our two basic conditions (base respect + explanation for Keiko), minutely remember everything she says or does and ultimately tell her that our clan will decide as a whole wether we agree to whatever proposals she has for us.
...Turns out there was more that I could think of than I thought.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Spicy, but oh so delicious. I'm really glad we finally got through to Keiko, and Hazou went above and beyond to tie this into the Akane situation for when we get back. A very strong speech, overall.
Hazou may be being a bit overconfident right now, but it sounds like what Keiko needed to hear.
First: that line about Orochimaru is pretty interesting. It's a more direct confirmation that Orochimaru was up to some really shady things before he left, and sort of suggests it was worse than just 'human experimentation for the good of humanity', but filtered through Jiraiya's mind it's a bit hard to tell.
Second: I think the 'do the thing' refers to the Ami date, but I'm not sure. @Velorien, does Hazou understand what Jiraiya meant by it?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hazō hasn't proposed any specific action relating to Keiko herself, so...
HAZOU: I'm getting really sick of these mental bloodline users acting like being a sith lord at me is respectful.
- Location
- Yes.
Clearly we must go full Dark!Hazou and feed our omniscient worldview into Hazou to screw with Ami.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
This is Angry!Good!Hazou more than Dark!Hazou in my opinion. His speech was all about emotions and what everyone means to each other and doing right by people, and from what I remember Dark!Hazou is about being unshakably cool and calculated towards a single malicious goal. My categorization is probably a bit wonky but I think Dark!Hazou is a different headspace with similar effectiveness to what we saw here.
(Not to say, of course, that one or the other isn't worth cultivating so we can advance our goals more efficiently, just that we need to push the right objective)
- Location
- Potato land
I actually suspect the situation is quite different than it was in canon. Imagine if Orochimaru was actually killing Leaf ninja for his experiments, as he was in canon. My read on MfD Jiraiya is that he would not ever forgive that kind of transgression, and would consider Orochimaru an enemy from that day on. However, we see them communicate and presumably cooperate to some extent, and I don't recall Jiraiya ever describe what Orochimaru did as "betrayal". He always says that the latter "left".
This makes me suspect that the problem was more Orochimaru's mental state, inability to connect to people and the village, something like that. Jiraiya indirectly compares him to Keiko here, after all.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
To me Dark! Hazō is just Hazō who is willing to break social niceties and rules to get what you want. Some times yes it will be cool and calculated to advance his goals. Other times it will be being passionate and not caring that it might have negative consequences. Mostly Dark! Hazō is not the incredibly polite terrified to offend everyone, whipping boy that we currently have
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail What are our clan colors? Canon Jiraiya color scheme?
@Noumero: Beyond what people already said regarding a more strict stance when it comes to Ami's behavior towards Keiko, I also have another few minor concerns.
First, we should lose some of the ego. Ami is a jōnin that we have designated as the head of her internal faction (be it at the size of one person or more). Hazou is nowhere close to that. We should appear less intent on having her respect Hazou in particular as an equal and settle for having her respect us as an official representative of our clan and also as someone with agency who deserves human levels of respect (in the modern sense). Her repertoire is large. All we can expect is for her to use it in a way that makes us not feel like a plaything, despite not lying to us.
What counts as games and how quickly do we leave? Is there a first strike warning or does this whole plan end the moment she does anything whatsoever that isn't straight-forward.
What does hostile mean? Enemy shinobi levels of hostile? We don't like you and don't want to associate with you hostile? We will try and stand between you and your goals hostile?
Especially if we want to "inform her of this" it must be phrased more clearly and definitely not like a threat. You do not threaten a jōnin without explicit provocation and good reason. Jōnin often see such actions as attacks when coming from lesser ninja.
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