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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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MMKII said:
Yes.

Are you honestly telling me you disagree with the assessment I just gave of the relative threat levels? Its the difference between playing Five Finger Fillet with dull knives and driving a car while blackout drunk. One might inconvenience you and rough you up a bit if you're not careful, but is ultimately amusing and not too dangerous. The other will undoubtedly kill you and everyone else along for the ride.
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Velorien said:
"Sage's huge swivelling ballsack!"

"You can see why we thought you should see this sooner rather than later, sir."

"You did the right thing," Jiraiya said grimly. "If this goes public before we've got a response ready, there'll be hell to pay. Hazō, do the thing."

Hazō replayed his side of the Ami meeting again. It was hell on his throat, but the looks of awe on Noburi's and even Keiko's faces were almost worth it. Was this what Noburi felt like when he'd independently rediscovered one of his bloodline's great secrets?

"And then she said 'yes'," he concluded. Keiko nodded with understanding.

Jiraiya rubbed his forehead. "I can see some things in there that you could maybe bend into a marriage proposal if you were a master diplomat—which I can buy—and not completely sane, which goes with being a master diplomat. We can weasel our way out of it, but it's going to be a headache if she decides to push the 'reneging on a commitment' angle. It's a hell of an opening."

After a few seconds, Hazō realised what Jiraiya was implying.

"It's not just about what really happened, is it? It's about what people choose to believe if they have the excuse. She can go to any anti-Leaf faction and they won't hesitate to say that she's right and this situation is proof of the Gōketsu being untrustworthy."

Jiraiya nodded. "And then Ren can offer to bail us out at a price. Or she can make sure it happens so she gets to bail us out at a price. Or Ami herself can screw us ten ways till Sunday."
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I mean, yes, the latter is worse than the former, but on the other hand it still seems pretty bad either way.
Noumero said:
... not clear on the logic. If she already has twenty bullets and only needs one to shoot us, why would giving her one more be a disaster?
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Forgot to respond to this, sorry. Using the metaphor, she can shoot us twenty times but her accuracy is touch and go and she doesn't know if a shot will do anything. So giving her the 21st bullet doesn't make sense.
 
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I don't see the danger of talking to her about alatsuki. It gives her nothing. Literally nothing.

Imagine two timelines.
One in which Ami says we talked to her about working with akatsuki, but we did not.
One in which Ami says we talked to her about working with akatsuki, and we did.

Do any of you think she could not do this just as effectively either way? It's like telling someone with a gun that you would prefer not to be punched in the stomache; you're sure they aren't going to shoot you either way, and even if they did the information would not help them in the slightest.
 
faflec said:
I mean, yes, the latter is worse than the former, but on the other hand it still seems pretty bad either way.
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Debatable. As Jiraiya himself noted, actually going through with the marriage would have resulted in some massive benefits for us. I'd say it was a "neutral, leaning bad" development for us.
Forgot to respond to this, sorry. Using the metaphor, she can shoot us twenty times but her accuracy is touch and go and she doesn't know if a shot will do anything. So giving her the 21st bullet doesn't make sense.
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So you're suggesting she'll use all of the bullets? Or that this bullet in particular is particularly well-made, ensuring better accuracy?

If the former, I'm again not sure how improving her chances from 1-q20​ to 1-q21​ (where q is the probability of a miss) is a disaster. If the latter... how so? Stoking the already-existing rumours of our collaboration with Mist or our inherent missing-nin untrustworthiness or our depravity would be much more reliable. As you've pointed out, Akatsuki killed our clan patriarch — why would we help them? Not to mention that few people even know Akatsuki are alive, probably.

And, again, it's going to be really easy to track it back to her, especially if she's going to go ahead and offer to fix it — at which point we'll say "no", boot her out of Leaf, and treat her as an enemy from now on. Everyone ends up unhappy and less than what they were before; that's not a good plan.
faflec said:
I don't even know what's going on with Akane, she has negative 50-some XP and I don't understand why.
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Oh, that's what Tsunade did! She punched her on a meta-textual level, stealing her XP! Horrific.
 
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Torpling said:
Normal Storage seals allow an object of volume <= 1m^3. Is this the volume of the smallest cube that would encompass the object you're sealing, xor the volume of air/water/whatever this object displaces?
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We foolishly said that there is a little tolerance... The object cannot displace more than 1m^3 but it does not have to fit into a 1m^3 cube. The tolerances are frustrating; they vary from attempt to attempt without cause that Hazō can identify. By now he has just given up trying and is no longer interested in studying the problem because chakra be crazy yo and there are more interesting things to spend time on. HE FEELS VERY STRONGLY ABOUT THIS. "Investigate this weirdness" is definitely not worth voting into a plan, because the topic is so intensely undesirable as an area of research.

Yes, that's what I'm going with and no, it absolutely has nothing to do with a desire to conserve spoons and not get fafleced. Really. Honest.

Off the top of my head examples of things not fitting in a 1m^3 cube that have been put in a storage seal: three coatracks tied together, a small armoire, a very small metal platform with posts coming up from the corners.

Note that OOC investigation will only result in sad QMs and a lot of HDK.

Noumero said:
Well, our entire main building is "private" as far as the Hyuuga are concerned, courtesy of Kagome, and this is explicitly a contingency for Ami infiltrating it — if it activates, the question whether it's a good idea loses relevancy.
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Only some of the building is protected. Just the main rooms.

Evenstar said:
God yes Mari.

Also, @ the GMS:



I see what you did there.
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I actually thought about that immediately after I wrote it. :> It wasn't intentional, but you have clearly planted ideas in my subconscious.

Noumero said:
Speaking of: @eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail, what colour are Mari's eyes currently?
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Purple.

charlesrwest said:
I would also like to point out that storage seals are now cheap enough to make destroying one worth it just to move furniture across town.
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That was actually a demonstration of wealth and power on Mari's part.
 
eaglejarl said:
Off the top of my head examples of things not fitting in a 1m^3 cube that have been put in a storage seal: three coatracks tied together, a small armoire, a very small metal platform with posts coming up from the corners.
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Ah, coatracks are a thing. That implies industrial-level metalsmithing that we can exploit infinity moneys. (This is a joke I have no idea if it implies that.)
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Would someone mind explaining this? I understand it has something to do with Truth Lost In The Fog, which costs Mari nice memories(?) so I'm alarmed on general principle, but the details escape me.
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We've puzzled out that her eyes seem to change color after using the technique, and they've changed color twice since we've been back I think.

TaliesinSkye said:
By the way, have there been any good ideas for getting Sasuke over to our political side?
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Throw Naruto at him, bond over our mutual hatred of the Kurosawa, offer him blood and power...?
 
Noumero said:
Speaking of: @eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail, what colour are Mari's eyes currently?
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eaglejarl said:
Purple.
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eaglejarl said:
Dinner was eaten. Hayashi and Katō had been ushered out amidst much polite bowing and words of gratitude and friendship. Dishes were put away. Everyone was sprawled over various pieces of furniture in the common room, except for Kenta and Yukari, who could at most be considered to be 'sitting very close together' instead of even 'cuddling', much less 'sprawling' on the loveseat. It was time for the announcement.

"Welcome to the First Official Clan Gōketsu Clan Meeting."

Mari's face split in a massive grin that utterly ruined the sense of gravitas Hazō had been trying for. Her eyes went wide, she clasped her hands under her chin with fingers interlaced, and let out a nigh-hypersonic squeal. "Eeeee! So adorable! You're being a grownup!" She rolled her head to the right, where Gōketsu-née-Ishihara Yukari was not-cuddling with her husband. "Isn't he adorable?"

The woman in question had clearly not internalized the concept that she was now a Gōketsu and sitting in her own absolutely enormous living room (that was in fact the size of the Ishihara-family-home ground floor) as opposed to being a guest in the house of a group of very weird ninja who did not know the basics of ninja/civilian interactions. Or maybe it was something else, she seemed to be giving Mari a terribly odd look. She wasn't sure whether to smile (so as to not offend Mari) or frown (so as not to offend Hazō) or what. She settled for an expression that could really only be described as 'nervous grimace'.

"It's okay, mom," Gōketsu Akane said. "Mari-sensei is just being a tease. She does that."

"Ah," Yukari said faintly.

"Speaking of Mari," Hazō said, desperately trying to get things...well, not back on track, since they'd never been there in the first place, but at least moving generally in the direction of where the tracks might have been made. "Mari, you've been holding out on us. As your Clan Head, I need to know what our best agent is-- JASHIN CHRIST, WOMAN! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYES?!
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Deathbybunnies said:
Would someone mind explaining this? I understand it has something to do with Truth Lost In The Fog, which costs Mari nice memories(?) so I'm alarmed on general principle, but the details escape me.
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No, its assumption made on assumption made on assumption. We don't know exactly what's the cost for TLitF is or why her Eye color changes. That's pure speculation
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Would someone mind explaining this? I understand it has something to do with Truth Lost In The Fog, which costs Mari nice memories(?) so I'm alarmed on general principle, but the details escape me.
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We don't know that it costs nice memories. There are guesses that it may actually make her temporarily sociopathic or something.

The cause for concern here is that they already changed colour recently: from green of the Exams arc to brown, and now to purple. We had a speculation that she used TLitF once, on an empty room, solely to "pay the price" and make herself sociopathic-but-functional. If she used it multiple times, that doesn't fit, which means she attacked someone — and then we ordered her to report on her actions and she didn't mention anything about TLitFing people, and then there are these two "mystery XP" we got for no reason we can determine...
 
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That was actually a really nice chapter @eaglejarl, please don't sell yourself short. I'm not sure I can describe precisely why, but I think it had exactly the right balance of serious-business planning, relevant and thematically appropriate worldbuilding, and casual character interaction. It was pleasant to read, but also felt substantial and important in terms of what was said. Well done.
 
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