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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Muer'ci said:
To those proposing we kill Takahashi immediately, or kidnap Minori, how does that happen? Hazou doesn't know what happened, Mari doesn't know what happened. Keiko probably won't tell till we all are in our camp. So why would we do that?
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My plan is written with implicit assumption that we can affect actions of both groups, at least retroactively, through pre-set contingencies and signals.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @Jackercracks can we choose course of action for Mari and co, directly? How about framing it as a policy that we set up in advance?
 
Muer'ci said:
Don't overestimate Keiko's ability to cope guys. She is not in the righ state of mind for any kind of double act. Insist and you may just end up driving her to Takahashi.
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Hold on, how is Keiko going to react when we tell her that we are getting out of the village?

She is not stupid, so she will pretty much immediately realize that we are leaving because we don't think she could hack it. This is totally going to break whatever little self confidence she had left. We could blame Inoue for putting Keiko in that situation in the first place, but Keiko will never buy the explanation that Mari could actually do something wrong.

I have a feeling that we will have a broken Keiko even if we do run away now. :(
 
HyperCatnip said:
I updated [X] Action Plan: Be Orochimaru
Taking Minori hostage is removed from the plan. Modified plan is below.
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I like the spirit of the plan, but I think that it's not possible to actually execute.

Basically,
  1. We don't control Inoue directly, only Hazou.
  2. Our knowledge of what happened in that room is OOC knowledge for everyone in our party except for Keiko.
  3. It would take Takahashi less than an hour away from us to pass along the information he had gathered.
Because of 3, to plug the information leak, either Takahashi must die right now, or we will have to track down and kill everyone he had told (or might have told, if we don't get a chance to interrogate him thoroughly), and those they have told, etc.. In other words, if we want to keep the information from spreading and Inoue doesn't kill him in the next few minutes, we would have to go with the extermination plan, not a retreat plan.

However, because of 1 and 2, we (Players Controlling Hazou) cannot really cause Inoue to kill Takahashi in the next few minutes. If it happens anyway, then it'll happen. If it doesn't, then we would have to live with the consequences of Takahashi probably sharing information with an unknown number of others.

Now, Inoue might be driven to immediately attack Takahashi anyway: she might be "triggered" like in Samurai Village; or if Keiko decided that Takahashi needs to die and signaled for Inoue to do it as soon as she was a safe distance away, she'd probably do it; or if Inoue managed to make difficult Deception roll, understood what happened, and didn't like it enough to attack; or for some other reason. None of these are something Hazou can affect, however. In fact, one thing that might stop Inoue killing Takahashi if she is inclined to might be hearing the "bug-out" signal, which might cause her to elect to flee rather than attack. In short, I don't see a way in which we (PCH) can cause Inoue to kill Takahashi quickly enough to contain the information leak.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't kill him either way, to send a message. There was a saying in the Nineties Russia that loosely translates as "If the principal does not agree, his heirs will."

However, it also suggests that renegotiation may be a profitable option: if we aren't willing to go to genocidal war to plug the information leak, we might as well extort better terms from Takahashi for his little game: he will train Keiko to the best of his ability, and he will accept supervision in doing so, and any "accidents" are on his head and those of his children.
 
@Twofold, I share your fears and warned everybody multiple times: [1] [2]
I still don't know what to do. One of the reasons I insist on killing Takahashi is that if we don't, Keiko will almost definitely break, one way or another.

Pahan said:
if we aren't willing to go to genocidal war to plug the information leak
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We almost genocided villages for the sin of knowing we exist. This case is way more severe. I am sad, but I will insist on containing Keiko's confessions using any means possible, including genocide, if necessary.
 
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Here's a thought. Why don't we not tell Keiko?

Right now Keiko's about to leave Takahashi and rejoin Mari and Noburi. Instead of Mari bursting in on their meeting and committing first-degree murder right then and there, it'd be a lot more reasonable for her to double back when Hazou's group sets off their flares to assassinate Takahashi, then rejoin Keiko and Noburi as they get with the rest.

This frames the entire plan as an "Akane screwed up, we need to go to Plan B", not a "Keiko screwed up, we need to go to Plan B". Keiko isn't depressed (relatively), Akane knows it wasn't really her fault, EVERYONE WINS.

Except Hidden Mountain, who gets to die.
 
faflec said:
Here's a thought. Why don't we not tell Keiko?

Right now Keiko's about to leave Takahashi and rejoin Mari and Noburi. Instead of Mari bursting in on their meeting and committing first-degree murder right then and there, it'd be a lot more reasonable for her to double back when Hazou's group sets off their flares to assassinate Takahashi, then rejoin Keiko and Noburi as they get with the rest.

This frames the entire plan as an "Akane screwed up, we need to go to Plan B", not a "Keiko screwed up, we need to go to Plan B". Keiko isn't depressed (relatively), Akane knows it wasn't really her fault, EVERYONE WINS.

Except Hidden Mountain, who gets to die.
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I don't agree with plans that hide salient information from members of the party. That way leads to drama.

E: As an aside, we don't even know that Keiko will be willing to tell us anything about what happened in there, assuming Mari wasn't listening in (which I kind of feel she was).
 
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Fine then frame it as Inoue being paranoid that Takahashi touched Keiko or something god knows she goes ape shit when that happens.
 
HyperCatnip said:
I share your fears and warned everybody multiple times:
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Yes, but you are forgetting the part where if we go ahead with this and get the summoning contract, then Keiko didn't really fail and all of this turns into a huge success.

Also, if Keiko gets messed up whichever way we go, we should go with the route that has the chance of getting a not fucked up Keiko AND awesome power. Of course the cut is not that dry here, but it does weight equation towards taking the offer.
 
Why can't I time travel IRL? I just want to see what happens in all the fics I'm reading, and play all the games that come out... :whistle:
 
HyperCatnip said:
@Twofold, I share your fears and warned everybody multiple times: [1] [2]
I still don't know what to do. One of the reasons I insist on killing Takahashi is that if we don't, Keiko will almost definitely break, one way or another.


We almost genocided villages for the sin of knowing we exist. This case is way more severe. I am sad, but I will insist on containing Keiko's confessions using any means possible, including genocide, if necessary.
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I mean... if we're going to wipe out the village, Fireworks is, I think, the current most detailed and most likely to succeed extermination plan. That said, Fireworks will make EVERYONE have a traumatic breakdown, with the exception of Kagome who's been in a perpetual mental breakdown since we met him. Mission Complete will make Keiko, and possibly Akane, feel bad, though I think we can mitigate it somewhat (encourage Keiko for getting the trainning scroll and confirmation on Akio as founder, we would stay, but the rest of the village is too hostile (see Kouta), and she had no way of knowing that would happen when she was negotiating). Be Orochimaru leads to (likely) several of us dying, and Keiko, and probably Akane having mental breakdowns. Summon Seekers is the only one with a possibility of an entirely happy ending, though it requires Takahashi to be not deceitful.

MadScientist said:
I'm in favour of killing Takahashi immediately, withdrawing for now, and then infiltrating the village and stealing the contract in a few days or weeks time when they're no longer on high alert.

Fuck this village.

Let's just tie up our loose ends, get what we came for, and go.
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For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure if one of the elders dies, especially the elder we were talking to not half an hour ago, the village will unite and try to kill us. They won't be coming off high alert in a couple weeks, they'll be actively tracking us with Tapirs.

faflec said:
I'm going to be honest and say that the "de-escalate situation" and "kill Takahashi" parts of everyone's plans are..a little less detailed than I'd want. Like THEY DONT SAY FUCKING GODDAMN SHIT ABOUT ANYTHING IT JUST TURNS THE THING INTO A HE-SAID SHE-SAID WHERE IS THE SHOWING THAT KOUTA'S INJURY IS COMPLETELY NONLETHAL OR HOW AKANE WOULD HAVE STABBED HIM IN THE CHEST IF SHE WANTED TO KILL HIM WTF
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To be fair, none of my plans have "kill Takahashi" as a part of them. On "de-escalate," I assumed that was something we'd bring up, but I've updated each of my plans to spell it out in each of the plans. by adding the line "Tell them to check to see if the cut is lethal or not."
 
Velorien said:
You can only control Hazō directly.

You have a couple of basic explosive-mediated signals such as "help!" or "regroup at base ASAP!" Any more detailed policies than that have to be planned in advance by the players.
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We should be very careful what we have Hazou suggest, in this case. Usually Keiko's willing to go along with our suggestions, but with the extremes that the popular plans seem to be going with, she may not agree to them.
 
Velorien said:
You can only control Hazō directly.

You have a couple of basic explosive-mediated signals such as "help!" or "regroup at base ASAP!" Any more detailed policies than that have to be planned in advance by the players.
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Thank you for the confirmation.

Again, @HyperCatnip et al., I am not necessarily opposed to killing Takahashi, but whether or not Inoue does it quickly enough to keep him from talking is not up to us, and the Kill Takahashi plans need to take that into account.
 
Radvic said:
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure if one of the elders dies, especially the elder we were talking to not half an hour ago, the village will unite and try to kill us. They won't be coming off high alert in a couple weeks, they'll be actively tracking us with Tapirs.
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We can evade trained animals.

They can't stay on high alert forever. Sooner or later they'll let their guard down.
 
Voting is still open. Current tally (spoiler because long).

CounterBot by eaglejarl, version 1.3


Plan name: Action Plan: Mission Complete
Voters: @jy3, @Radvic, @RedV, @Traiden
Num votes: 4


Plan name: Action Plan: Summon Seekers
Voters: @ChronOblivion, @jy3, @Radvic, @RedV
Num votes: 4


Plan name: Action Plan: Be Orochimaru
Voters: @HyperCatnip, @MadScientist, @QTesseract
Num votes: 3


Plan name: "Murder is the simplest solution." Tom Riddle
Voters: @faflec
Num votes: 1


Plan name: Action Plan: Akane: Finish The Job
Voters: @MadScientist
Num votes: 1


Plan name: Action Plan: Fireworks
Voters: @Radvic
Num votes: 1


Plan name: Action Plan: Genjutsu Kai
Voters: @HoratioVonBecker
Num votes: 1


Plan name: Action Plan: Test All The Implosion Seals
Voters: @Muer'ci
Num votes: 1


Plan name: Keiko Training: Summons.
Voters: @RedV
Num votes: 1



Number of voters: 11
 
MadScientist said:
We can evade trained animals.

They can't stay on high alert forever. Sooner or later they'll let their guard down.
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Except we can't evade trained animals - that's how Jiraiya tracked us. That said, we can probably kill their groups coming after us, but that's more guerrilla warfare, and will not result in them lowering their guard. Also, I like the starting moves of Fireworks more than I do a single assassination of Takahashi. Sure, he knows what Keiko told him about us, but Fireworks is a plan based on things Keiko couldn't have known we were planning to do, using combat tactics we haven't used before (so wouldn't be in Keiko's report), and I doubt he was able to figure out a counter to Noburi's bloodline from Keiko's information.

*sees voting tally*
Wait, nobody wants to murder everyone using the fireworks plan? But... but... total war and genocide!
*puppy eyes for murder*
 
If we take the offer then we aren't getting a summoner out of the deal.

We might get permanently broken Kei.
We might get dead Kei.
We might get brainwashed summoner Kei.
But we won't just get summoner Kei.

Takahashi won't blaspheme against his religion, commit political suicide, and spend a lot of his free time training Kei for the purposes of just letting her be a tapir summoner and then go on her merry way.
That's not how this works.
That's not how any of this works.
 
[X] Summon Seekers

E: I would rather vote for a slightly more conservative plan with more contingencies for Mari's intervention, but I cannot in good conscience vote for any plans that involve murder without learning his motivations.
 
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Cariyaga said:
[X] Summon Seekers

E: I would rather vote for a slightly more conservative plan with more contingencies for Mari's intervention, but I cannot in good conscience vote for any plans that involve murder without learning his motivations.
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If you have suggestions for contingencies, feel free to suggest them and tag me and I'll probably put them in (unless I think they're a bad idea, which, honestly, most contingencies aren't bad ideas).
 
Radvic said:
If you have suggestions for contingencies, feel free to suggest them and tag me and I'll probably put them in (unless I think they're a bad idea, which, honestly, most contingencies aren't bad ideas).
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Will give it some thought.

Also, I just want to say I TOLD YOU ALL SO WE SHOULDN'T HAVE SENT KEIKO TO TALK TO THE NINJUTSU SPECIALIST YOU'RE ALL INSANE. ...ahem. (e: being silly if that wasn't clear)

e2: Okay, upon rereading the update... I still stand by Summon Seekers. We should get the other elders' impressions of Takahashi (how religious is he?). He's been stated to care only about his art. Because of this, I cannot imagine him misteaching someone. If the other elders state him to be prideful (an impression I've gotten from him, but I don't trust Keiko's impressions), I seriously doubt he'd ever teach Keiko incorrectly.
 
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