Evenstar
Triple Jump Unlocked
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
fair
i'm squashing things
fake models
will have more to say when i'm not exhausted
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
fair
i'm squashing things
fake models
will have more to say when i'm not exhausted
Am unsure if you're serious or not.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
I am pretty sure that he is not serious.
Evenstar
Triple Jump Unlocked
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The hidden premise is "we're talking about Hazou."
We already have an underlying model of him, so when we ask the question "what does x is y mean?", we're actually asking "what does x is y mean for Hazou?"
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The QMs can't open them so we can make our secret plots and plans without them cottoning on.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Now, now, that wasn't teasing. We were heroically trying to break you out of a memory loop! And we succeeded! We've saved you from hours, perhaps days of missing time!Teasing the QM always gets results.
- Location
- Why would this be required?
Well now I sort of want to add in a scene that gets Hazo into a fight just to give you some cool action scenes to write.
All politics/work and no brawls make Jarl a dull....flame...bird? I don't know...
Last edited:
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Its been a while since we got a good workout in. Lee and Akane could probably use one too, how does an hour or two before dawn sound as a starting time? The Power of Youth will illuminate our path forwards at such a dark hour etc.
- Location
- Why would this be required?
You know what, you're right. I don't think Hazo has really had the chance to improve any since the chunin exams, but Lee and Akane have been home for a while. I'd love to see how Hazo currently stacks up with them, and if they've gotten that much better it gives him a bit of a kick in the pants to really start improving himself once things settle down enough.
Tua
鸡肉面条汤
- Location
- شوربة الدجاج المعكرونة
Indeed.
It would be such a shame if Hazou gets knocked around so hard by the combined power of Youth that he doesn't wake up until after the vote for Hokage so all those spoon heavy questions for the QMs become irrelevant.
Now I realize that we didn't vote for that this cycle but Youth has a mind of its own and will likely seek out Hazou by itself.
Such a shame really.
The real plan we voted for two cycles ago was the [x] Let EJ Write Whatever He Likes, We Trust Him we made along the way.
- Location
- Why would this be required?
Goketsu sponsored annual YOUTH martial tournament when?
Hazo: grh, Akane when, when did you get this strong?!
Akane: hmph, It looks like you....haven't been training Hazo-sensei. Whereas I have pushed been pushing myself to my limits....under Tsunade-sensei!
Crowd: *GASP*
Hazo: !
Noburi: uwah!
Keiko:....tch
Mari: hmmmm(so that's it, she's using....that technique. Looks like things just got, interesting....)
Kagome: why are you all grunting like that?
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Code:
void faflec.reaction(bool lupchanz)
{
if (lupchanz == true)
{
std::cout << red << "*SCREAMING IN KAGOME*";
}
else
{
std::cout << "AIEEEEEEEEE";
}
}
// Function looks okay. All headers are in place, not sure what went wrong.
// ... Maybe it should be called by faflec.reaction() rather than faflec.reaction ?
- Location
- Pacific standard
Hey Mr. Doom Eagle of Punching, was the lore update the totality of todays update?
Hugs either way, just asking so I know if I need to keep obsessively refreshing the quest
Edit: wait the lore update was yesterday. I notice I am confused
Hugs either way, just asking so I know if I need to keep obsessively refreshing the quest
Edit: wait the lore update was yesterday. I notice I am confused
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
Did we ever get this technique/cash out this scroll?
Lore update what?
- Location
- Yes.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
That's Dr. Doom Eagle of Punching. He didn't go to to the school of hard knocks for 8 years to be called Mr.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Actually Dr. Doom Eagle of punching was his creator. Technically he should be called Doom Eagle of Punching's Monster
Last edited:
"Doom Eagle of Punching" refers to both the doctor and the monster, since the monster is (arguably) the doctor's child, and should therefore inherit the name.
Chapter 268: More Like a Cobweb
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"What's all this about, Hazō?" Noburi demanded.
Hazō took a moment to set down the tea tray he was carrying and pass out the three bowls of snacks, much to Kagome-sensei's delight. ("Oooh! Honeyed almonds!" [om nom nom noises])
"It's a Nara thing," Hazō said, once everything was settled. "Shikamaru explained it to me. They have a habit of regularly setting aside time to spend thirty minutes thinking about how each person they know could destroy them, and how they could destroy that person. I thought we should try it."
"A bit much, don't you think?" Mari said, looking pointedly around the room at the large array of activated privacy seals ("Can't let those Hyūga stinkers spy on us with their cheating eyeballs!"), multiple chalkboards, stacks of paper, brushes, a small bowl of Gō stones, and the kitchen egg timer.
Hazō shrugged and turned the timer over, setting a single Gō stone next to it. "It seemed like a good idea. Just try it, okay?"
The twenty-don't-ask-years-old clan matriarch shrugged. "Fine. Where do you want to start?"
"Money," Hazō said, turning to write across the first blackboard in large kanji. "It's one of our biggest weak points right now, given the loss of the Pangolin gold. We need to establish revenue streams quickly, which means setting up investments with merchants. If someone wanted to interfere with that, they could disguise themselves as one of us and poison our professional relationships."
"Seems a bit baroque," Mari noted. "Complex false-flag plays like that are fragile. If you make a mistake then the scam will come out, at which point you've driven the two parties closer together and united them against you. If Hyūga wanted to destroy us, it would make more sense to draw on their political connections, undoubtedly bottomless supply of blackmail opportunities, and vast wealth. Economic warfare is legal and incredibly effective, especially among rich clans where the lack of liquidity provides pressure points."
"'Liquidity?" Noburi asked. "What?"
"Cash is liquid because you can spend it immediately," Mari explained. "Other things may be valuable, but you need to sell them before you have physical money that you can spend. The Hyūga are rich, but they probably don't have a lot of actual ryō sitting in their vault. Most of their money is going to be in the form of land ownership, or interest-bearing loans that they've made to various business owners, or percentage ownership of a caravan, or information about trade opportunities that their ninja have scouted and are bidding out to appropriate traders. Those things are money, but you can't buy a bowl of ramen with them. It takes time to convert them into liquid cash that you can actually spend on physical stuff, or invest in a business."
"Okay," Noburi said, nodding. "So, say that sawmill owner wanted to take a loan so he could grow his business. The Gōketsu could do it on good terms and make money off the interest on the loan, everybody wins. The Asshat Collective doesn't want us to get that money because they are asshats who sit around wearing hats made out of asses while thinking up new ways to be asshats. Maybe they don't have enough cash to buy out the loan opportunity before we get there, so instead they tell the sawmill guy that if he takes our investment then the Hyūga will not buy any of his products, and they will also order their bootlickers not to buy from him either."
"Like the Merchant Council calling embargo," Kagome-sensei said.
"Spot on," Mari said, nodding in approval. "Although the Merchant Council embargo is really the bijū attack of economic warfare. No one wants to go that far at the start of the day."
"Going back to the point," Hazō said, "someone could poison the well against us by going around in disguise as us, spreading rumors and blackening our names." He cocked his head. "Or by actually poisoning one of the wells, while wearing a disguise of us and making sure to be seen. Or they could disguise themselves and sneak onto the compound. Oh...hm. Could we disguise ourselves as Hyūga and sneak onto their compound? Or maybe—"
"If I may interrupt this descent into madness," Mari said. "That idea about spreading rumors works. A general whisper campaign is easy to pull off and can be very effective, especially if it targets a fracture point. For example, you can drive a wedge between spouses by making it sound like one of them is cheating. Or between siblings by making the less extroverted one think that the other one is laughing about them. That kind of thing."
"Why all this focus on disguises, Hazō?" Akane asked. "They wouldn't need to be disguised to spread whispers."
Hazō shrugged. "I dunno, they've just been on my mind. I keep thinking about the fourth event at the Chūnin Exams."
"Ugh," Noburi said. "I still can't believe they made me ask around for an erectile dysfunction cure."
"Don't worry, Nobs," Hazō said kindly. "I'm sure you won't need to worry about that for at least twenty or thirty months."
"You're older than I am, bucko. My mighty dragon will be roaring long after your granite walls have turned to mud."
"Forget the whole thing about disguises," Kagome-sensei said quickly. "Let's talk about something else. Something that isn't disguises. Like money. We were talking about money, right?"
"Right," Hazō said. He paused. "Although...what's the problem with disguises?"
"Nothing! There's no problem with disguises. No reason that we shouldn't talk about them, none at all. It's just that they're really boring. So there's no need to talk about them. Money is way more interesting." He grabbed a handful of nuts and threw them in his mouth, chewing frantically. "O' nuf! We cou' ta'k a'out nuf!"
"Kagome," Mari said. "You're hiding something. What is it?"
Kagome-sensei swallowed convulsively. "Nothing! I'm not hiding a thing! Open book, that's me. There's nothing odd about disguises and they've always worked exactly the way they do now which is why they're really, really boring and not worth talking about."
"Kagome."
Kagome-sensei's eyes shifted nervously. "Yes?"
"What are you hiding?"
The sealmaster opened his mouth...and then closed it again. He sighed and poured himself a cup of tea, slumping back in his chair and blowing on it to cool it. "Yes, there is something. No, I really don't want to talk about it. It's—"
Hazō flashed back to some of the things that he sincerely wished Kagome-sensei had never told him, as well as some of his more awful sealing failure stories. The parade of horrific memories momentarily drowned out the man in question, and when Hazō snapped back to awareness there was silence at the table.
Crap. What had Kagome-sensei said? Admitting that he hadn't been paying attention would be rude and hurtful; well, fortunately, the man had been clear about the fact that he didn't want to discuss it, so Hazō had a ready-made excuse.
"Well, moving on," he began. "Let's—"
"Wait," Akane said, frowning. "I'm sorry, Kagome. I apologize, but I got distracted for a moment. Did you say 'even if I was allowed to tell you'?"
Kagome-sensei gave the tiny snort of a man to whose miserably low expectations the universe had just lived down. "Yes. Look, it's not worth it, okay? Let it go."
"Is someone threatening you, Kagome?" Mari demanded, her tone serious. "That's not something we can allow."
Kagome-sensei sighed and rubbed his balding head in frustration. "No one is threatening me."
"Then why wouldn't you be allowed to tell us?"
"Just let it go, all right? You all think I'm crazy already. Let's not make it worse."
"Sensei! We don't think you're crazy!"
Kagome-sensei eyed Hazō with a magnificently doubtful eyebrow. "Really." He slurped a sip of his tea, not releasing Hazō's gaze. "So you think I'm just as sane and normal as everyone else at this table?"
Hazō paused. "Well...uh, I mean...Akane is way saner than the rest of us! And none of us are 'normal', right? We're ninja."
"Mm-hm. Let's talk about money. It's much more interesting."
"Kagome," Akane said, reaching out to touch the older man's hand. "We won't force you to tell us anything you don't want to if it doesn't threaten our clan." She paused, smiling for just a moment as the novelty sank in.
"Oh, hey, speaking of that, I've got the paperwork," Noburi said, digging around in his pocket and pulling out a sheaf of papers. "Hazō, you just need to sign this and put the Gōketsu seal on it, then I take it back to the Tower and boom! New sister and—" He cocked his head, frowning. "Akane, if you're my sister and they're your parents but neither of them is my parent then does that make them my uncle and aunt, or is it one of those weird cousin things that I can never keep straight?"
"Technically, everyone is everyone's cousin unless they have a more specific relationship," Hazō said helpfully. "Since the original humans were created in the Land of Water and spread from there, we're all descended from the same people." He frowned. "It's a little weird when you think about it...don't most clans make a point of exogamous marriage at least once a generation, just to ensure that their blood doesn't grow weak? If we're all descended from the same woman, shouldn't there be more birth problems?" He paused, thinking. "Oh, maybe that's what civilians are—ninja whose blood got too weak and they lost chakra?" He shook his head. "No, that doesn't make sense. The Sage gave chakra to everyone, so there should have been nothing but ninja in the beginning."
Mari was frowning and shaking her head as though trying to dislodge an annoying fly. "Wait," she said. "There was something, but I got distracted." Her eyes went to the ceiling and her fingers flicked slightly as she combed back through her thoughts. "Hazō had this whole list of Hazō ideas about whisper campaigns and poisoning wells and people sneaking onto our compound or us sneaking onto the Hyūga compound, but I can't remember exactly what he said. Why can't I remember?" A hint of fear brushed her words at the end.
"Is something wrong, sensei?" Akane asked.
"I should be able to remember exactly what Hazō said, but I don't," the redhead said, the hint of fear having graduated to a genuine note of near-panic. "That's a key part of my training as an infiltrator: Remember conversations and visual details accurately for at least long enough so there's a chance to record them." She squeezed her eyes closed, concentrating. "Hazō, you were the last one into the room. The order was me, Noburi, Akane, Kagome, you. You were carrying the tea tray. It had a pot of tea with steam coming out of the spout. There were five cups in an arc behind it; the rightmost one was the chipped one and I remember thinking that I should throw that out before it cracked the rest of the way. The tray had three bowls, left to right from my perspective: honeyed almonds, carrot sticks, and the last of those apples that you harvested up in Iron the first time we were there and have been hoarding in your scrolls. Noburi asked 'What's this all about, Hazō?' and you set the tray down before you replied." Eyes still closed, she gestured with one finger. "You distributed the bowls and Kagome promptly grabbed the honeyed almonds. You said it was a Nara thing where they try to figure out how to destroy each other, I asked if the blackboards and whatever weren't a bit much, you said it seemed like a good idea. You wanted to start with money. You said: 'It's one of our biggest weak points right now, given the loss of the Pangolin gold. We need to establish revenue streams quickly, which means setting up investments with merchants. If someone wanted to interfere with that, they could poison our professional relationships.' Then I said 'Seems a bit baroque. Complex false-flag plays like that are fragile.'" She stopped talking and opened her eyes, frowning. "That doesn't make sense."
"What doesn't, sensei?" Akane asked.
"A whisper campaign to sabotage professional relationships is not a false-flag play. It would only be a false flag if you were pretending to be the person you were spreading the rumors about, but that's not generally a good move. There's too many points of failure for it to work for long, unless you have massive resources behind you. The truth will always come out, and once it does you've driven the two parties closer together and turned them against you."
"What do you mean 'unless you have massive resources behind you'?" Akane asked.
Mari shrugged. "If you want to pull a false flag then you need to have huge amounts of detail to back it up, and a plausible story. It's similar to that story Kagome told us, where Wind set up that 'secret outpost' in order to hide the fact that they'd cracked the Steel Tree code. That wasn't technically a false flag since they weren't pretending to be someone other than who they actually were, but the idea is similar. That wasn't something that a single infiltrator could have done; it required the coordinated efforts of a nation state."
"We're getting sidetracked again," Noburi said. "Mari, you were talking about your memory slipping."
Mari's eyes widened. "Yes, I was. And then I got distracted and wandered off in my thoughts." Her face went pale. "Oh, Sage. I'm getting brain-sick, just like my Gran. I'm going to forget who you all are and start wandering the streets in my nightgown trying to find people who died years ago."
"You're not sick," Kagome-sensei said. "You're not sick and you're not going to forget us. You're just trying to think about something that shifted Out and reality isn't letting you."
Four pairs of eyes stared at him.
"What."
"You're not sick, Mari. Reality sometimes loses bits of itself, and you're trying to think about one of the bits that it lost. You won't be able to, so just let it go."
"Sensei..." Hazō began. He paused, unsure of where to go from there.
Kagome-sensei sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "I'm going to explain this, and you're all going to get distracted partway through. Tomorrow, you'll remember the outline of this conversation but bits of it will have disappeared from your memory and the rest will be a little fuzzy. You'll mostly remember me being crazy."
Hazō bit his lip nervously. There had been a lot of times that Kagome-sensei had gone off on crazy diatribes since he'd known the man. For example, every use of the word 'lupchanz'.
Mari reached out and grabbed some paper, an inkwell, and a brush. She dipped the brush and swirled elegant kanji across the page: I am not brain sick. Kagome said reality loses bits of itself and I was trying to remember one. She finished writing and looked up, brush poised above the paper. "I am not forgetting this," she said fiercely. "Talk."
Kagome-sensei smiled sadly. "You can try. It won't help. The inkwell will get knocked over, obscuring your notes. If you keep it in a deep baking pan so that a spill wouldn't reach the notes then the teapot will crack and the tea will soak the pages, smearing the ink. If you take the teapot and the cups out of the room right now then after we leave you'll put the notes on your desk and tonight they'll be ruined by an entirely plausible leak in the roof. There's always something."
He shrugged. "But, fine. I'll try again.
"You've heard me say this before: Reality is like a cobweb. Easily torn, but the parts are sticky so they glue themselves back together afterwards. Sometimes, when it gets torn, parts of the cobweb don't reattach. They fall Out."
Hazō couldn't help but remember the first time Kagome-sensei had warned him about the Out, and how it was best not to think too much about what, or who, might dwell there. Was this truly a safe conversation to be having? The older sealmaster had been sufficiently emphatic that even Hazō had declined to consider ways of weaponizing such a thing. Although, it might be possible to—
"Hazō," Kagome-sensei said.
"Hm? Yes, sorry. What?"
"You got distracted, right?"
Hazō paused. "Yes? I was just remembering the first time you told me about the Out, and how dangerous it was. Should we really be talking about it? For that matter, what is it exactly—maybe one of those inversion points where the fifth-dimension bridges should link up to the sixth but don't? Because I always wondered—"
"Stop," Mari said. "You're getting sidetracked. Kagome, you were talking about reality being like a cobweb."
The older man nodded. "You lost your notes," he said, pointing at the page in front of her.
Mari looked down to find out that the brush she'd been holding poised above the paper had dripped, ruining several of the kanji and rendering the notes meaningless. "Damnit!"
"Not your fault. Anyway, when reality forgets a piece of itself, I call that a 'shift'. Something shifts Out and it's gone. No one remembers it. Records that referred to it are blank or lost. Sand used to have gliders, but then they shifted Out. Now there's a whole bunch of ninja who don't understand why their combat skills are terrible.
"Until a few weeks ago, there was a ninjutsu called 'henge'. It was an Academy technique that allowed you to turn into a different person. Older, younger, male, female, whatever. Literally every ninja in the world knew it."
"Kagome," Mari said carefully, "shapeshifting is something that every infiltration specialist in the history of the world has wanted. Something like that would be an S-rank secret of whichever village invented it."
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "Dunno. Literally every ninja in the world knew it. It was one of the Basic Three ninjutsu taught in every Academy."
Noburi frowned. "Wait, you mean the Twin Techniques, right? Clone and Substitution?"
"There were three until just a few weeks ago," Kagome-sensei said firmly. "It disappeared right after the fourth event of the Chūnin Exams." He paused. "For that matter, that isn't even the first time henge has shifted. Until about two years ago, henge would let you turn into animals if you were good enough at it." He smiled sadly. "I really enjoyed flying. I used to become a chakra eagle. Made hunting so much easier."
"How is it that you remember this when no one else does?" Akane asked.
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "Dunno. The shifts have always affected my abilities but not my memories. I can't use henge anymore, but I still remember it."
"'Have always'?" Mari asked warily. "How many of these things have there been?"
"Dozens during my lifetime. Who knows how many before me?" He glanced to the side. "You still with us, Noburi?"
Noburi jumped and looked guilty. "Yep. Right here. No problem."
"How many shifts have there been?" Kagome-sensei demanded, his tone clearly saying he knew what the answer would be.
"...Okay, busted. Sorry, I got distracted. I was thinking what it would be like to fly like an eagle, and that got me thinking about when we ran from Snow to the islands on skywalkers. Those were good days."
"Indeed," Akane said wistfully. "Simpler times."
"Remember that sunset?" Hazō asked, smiling across the table at Akane.
"Indeed. It was very beautiful." She smiled back.
"Yeah, well, the part I remember was you lot yapping after the sky squid went past," Mari said with a laugh. "We had just left fucking Snow and had been running all day every day, above the clouds where it was chilly all the time. I was tired and grumpy and honestly wouldn't have minded if the damn thing had eaten us as long as I could get some decent sleep."
"I feel you," Noburi said, grinning. "I didn't want to say anything, but I was bushed at the time. I was so glad when we made it to the islands."
Hazō's brother paused, eyes lighting up at a memory. "Oh, wow, remember those bushes with the super resilient leaves that made such a great bed? Man, I have never slept as well before or since. We should send minions to get us some of those." He turned to Hazō. "You're the Clan Head, you can go hire some minions. Go forth and be useful, Clan Head!"
Kagome-sensei leaned back in his chair, his expression somewhere between resigned and bemused. Hazō gave him a concerned look; the older man shook his head and waved a hand dismissively, offering his student a grateful smile. Hazō considered him for a moment, then shrugged and returned his attention to the conversation.
XP AWARD: 5
The plan is full of fascinating stuff, although it's way too huge for one or probably even two updates. Call it a 4 XP plan; if it had been more manageable I would probably have gone to 5 XP base. That's not super relevant since the update covered less than an hour, which is almost never going to get more than the 1 XP base award that this update gets.
On top of the base there's +1 XP for brevity and +3 XP bonus for having 46 unique voters.
Note that the formula I used for "bonus XP for many voters" this time was super generous in order to provide motivation, mostly as a way to see how many lurkers we had. It's not on the table for next time, but I might or might not throw an extra point onto the next Sunday update if participation remained especially high...hint, hint. (Questions about "how high" will receive a dignified silence in reply.)
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, June 12, 2019, at 12pm London time.
Last edited by a moderator: