Remove ads

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Reader mode
Noumero said:
I just removed that part; we won't progress that far regardless.

  • Can you remind me in which chapters the individuals mentioned in the first section appeared, so that I may link to them for the QMs' convenience?
  • I thought we were meeting with Nakano's group at night? Should I remove the scheduled meeting and meet them "spontaneously" during the operatives search at morning?

Yay! Except the part where Kagome potentially dies, I would not like that. But more sealing failures sounds magnificent!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


It's just more incentive for the necromancy initiative :p
 
eaglejarl said:
A heist sounds like a blast to me! What are you planning to heist?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Something in the ballpark of:

Noumero said:
I'm game as long as we further two or more other objectives with this action. Could we, e. g., hit an outside-Leaf Hyuuga source of income with the collaboration of the Yakuza, thereby inconveniencing our opponents, forging new ties, and getting money?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Perhaps we can make it a two-fer and blame it on some pesky chunin level Leaf missing-nin that we've separately already killed and stored away in storage seals, thereby painting us as the heroes of this tragic tale.

Quite a shame that Mizuki burned your silk farm to the ground and stole all of your crops and cash that were stored on site, Hyuuga-bootlicker, but luckily enough we managed to hunt him down the day after and brutally murder him! Gouketsu clan to the rescue!
 
Noumero said:
Can you remind me in which chapters the individuals mentioned in the first section appeared, so that I may link to them for the QMs' convenience?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
@faflec? I think they were somewhere in Ch 200-235ish, we visited the mission desk a few times then.
Noumero said:
I thought we were meeting with Nakano's group at night? Should I remove the scheduled meeting and meet them "spontaneously" during the operatives search at morning?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I figured we would be better able to convince them to join up if we're negotiating from a place where we have very high status--in our house-- with some of the NPCs to help us out if one or two of them end up being difficult. That was the point of my other section, it was mostly "What do with Team Nakano +1 during/after dinner."
 
eaglejarl said:
One thing you're right about, though: We've been lax about showing sealing failures by NPC sealmasters throughout Leaf. Thanks for bringing that to our attention; I'll have a failure in the next update to catch up with all the times there probably should have been one before this. I'll also talk to the other QMs about having a general rule for "make one roll representing all the NPCs to see if anyone screwed up in a meaningful way and/or died today." Over time this will kill off some of the Leaf sealmasters, and possibly Kagome, thereby raising Hazō's value. Hopefully it won't obliterate too much of the city in the process.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, in theory the number of Leaf sealmasters is more or less at a rough equilibrium so over the course of many years the number of sealmasters dying to sealing failures should be roughly balanced by the number of sealmasters joining the trade. More random explosions does sound like a good time though, so you won't see me complaining :p
 
MMKII said:
@faflec? I think they were somewhere in Ch 200-235ish, we visited the mission desk a few times then.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
eaglejarl said:
The desk chūnin was a middle-aged woman with a neatly-turned-out uniform, the left leg of which was pinned up over the stump of her leg. Her left hand was missing the ring and little fingers and there were vicious burn scars down the left side of her face. Her hair was long and carefully styled to cover the worst of them, but there was only so much that could be done to conceal the damage.

Hazō didn't even blink. There were too many scarred and wounded ninja veterans around for it to be noteworthy, even if her wounds were unusually severe.

The woman did a doubletake as she recognized him, then offered a smile and a respectful bow of the head. "You're the Gōketsu kids, right? I'm Ito. Ito Ino. Hopefully you've already been told this, but thank you for your service. What you had to go through...it must have been horrible. Truly, the Will of Fire burns bright in all of you."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

eaglejarl said:
"Good morning, sirs and ma'am," said the genin manning the mission desk. He was in his early twenties and lacked his chūnin vest. There were no significant visible scars or missing limbs, meaning his failure to be promoted was not due to medical incapacitation but, presumably, some catastrophic personal failure—perhaps he lacked the will to train hard enough, or was simply too stupid to be trusted on solo missions.

The word 'skinwaste' flickered through Hazō's mind, but he pushed it away and refused to allow his face to respond to the thought. It was a Mist word and had no place in Leaf.

"Good morning," Keiko said. "We would like a short C-rank. Do you have any messenger missions?"

The man smiled. "Itchy feet, huh?"

"Something like that. Missions?"

The man consulted the mission book, lips moving slightly as he ran his finger slowly down the page. "Let's see, messenger, messenger...I've got a caravan escort mission going to Lightning."

"Pass," Noburi said.

"Bodyguard for—"

"Pass."

"Till'n'fill?"

Hazō frowned. "I don't know that term."

"Till'n'fill is when you go out and help some civilians with infrastructure issues. Usually it's farmers, and it's things like setting some explosive tags to clear out tree stumps, using Earth jutsu to build walls or Fire jutsu to burn off fields, that kind of thing."

The floor tilted under Hazō and the firmament shook above him. This was his own concept of Uplift, already being implemented. How had he not known about this?

"I've never heard of such a thing," he said, almost stumbling over the words. "How...I mean, what...I mean...."

The genin chuckled. "Yeah, weird, huh? I mean, ninja doing farm work? Bizarre. Anyway, it's a new mission category. Lord Hokage directed that everyone should suggest it to any village they pass through. It's catching on; farmers like it and it's easy money. Not a lot of money, but it's light work. Good for people who are convalescing, or for anyone who wants to pick up a little extra pocket change."

"How many of these are there?"

The genin looked down at the mission book again, his finger sliding slowly down the page, lips moving as he silently counted. Seconds dragged by as the man worked his way through the kanji, until all three Gōketsu were struggling to conceal their impatience.

"Six," the skinwaste finally said. "One burnoff, three wall jobs, one plowing, and a land clearance thing."

"We'll take one of the wall jobs," Hazō said excitedly. "I've got Multiple Earth Wall."

"Don't you want to know how much it—"

"Don't care," Hazō said. "We'll take it."

The man's eyebrows went up but he shrugged. "Your call, sir. Here you go." He shuffled through the pile of papers in front of him, extracted one, and handed it over. "And what would you two like?" he asked, looking at Keiko and Noburi.

"Hang on, I said 'we' would take it," Hazō said.

"Sorry sir, it's a one-person job. Can't be wasting multiple ninja on something this trivial, after all."

"I will take the plowing," Keiko said. "My pangolins will make short work of it."

The man frowned. "Pangolins, ma'am? I'm not familiar with that jutsu. Is it long-ranged? The ground is frozen solid and full of sickweed spores. It needs to be turned over so that the starlight can kill the spores. You don't want to be in the middle of it when the spores get kicked up."

"She's the Pangolin Summoner," Hazō said impatiently. "You know, big scaly things with huge claws? Really good at digging? Totally immune to poison?"

"Oh," the skinwaste said. "Huh. Okay, well, I guess that's fine. Here you go." He made another mark in the mission book, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration, then shuffled through the papers with frustrating slowness before passing the relevant sheet to Keiko.

"I'll take the land clearance," Noburi said quickly. "It's that one." He pointed to the relevant sheet where it sat half-exposed in the stack.

The skinwaste shot a surprised glance at Noburi, then picked up the sheet and read through it slowly. "Wow, you've got good eyes, sir. What do you have for the job, sir?"

"Excuse me?"

"Policy is that I can't give these to people who can't do the job. Unprofessional, sir."

Noburi sighed in aggravation. "They need some land cleared, right? Trees knocked down, rocks moved, that kind of thing?"

The stupid idiot desk minion bent over the sheet again. "Let's see...there's brush and, um, threehorn dens and...grappler oak—" Waiting for him to puzzle through the kanji nearly drove Hazō to scream.

"Yeah, whatever," Noburi broke in. "Look, I'm carrying about a hundred and fifty explosive tags on me right now, so I doubt there's anything there that'll be an issue."

Three heads turned to Noburi in shock.

"A hundred and fifty?" Hazō asked.

Noburi shifted in mild embarrassment. "Yeah, I realized on the way over that I forgot to restock after the mission."

"You forgot to restock?" the skinwaste said faintly. "A hundred and fifty tags and you forgot to restock?"

"I know, right?" Hazō muttered. "Idiot." He ruffled through a belt pouch and passed over a wad of seals. "Here, this should cover you for a short thing like this."

Noburi collected the pack from Hazō and the one that Keiko offered, the edge barely clasped between her fingertips.

"Thanks," Noburi said. He turned to the desk minion and held out an expectant hand. "Mission page, please?"

"Uh, sir," the skinwaste said, holding onto the page. "You know that you won't be comped for the tags, right? It's going to lose you money if you use more than one or two."

"Just give me the damn mission, okay?"

"Yes sir. Here you go." He passed the sheet over and bent to make the relevant mark in the mission book.

The Gōketsu were out the door before his brush touched ink.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

eaglejarl said:
The skinwaste wasn't manning the desk this time. Today there was a grizzled veteran with chūnin flashes on his vest and a huge bandage across the left side of his neck and down his shoulder that suggested he was on convalescent duty.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he asked as Hazō walked through the door.

"Good morning," Hazō said, nodding politely. "I was hoping you had a till'n'fill?"

The man seemed surprised, but he scanned down the mission list for a moment.

"Yeah, I've got one," he said. "Bunch of suckvines encroaching on a farm about an hour out. The farmers could handle it, but it's a rough job for softfoots. The pay is absolute shit, though. I can't even believe they posted it. Seriously, five hundred ryō?"

Hazō shrugged. "I just want to be useful," he said. "It's not really about the money."

The older man snorted. "Yeah, I suppose not. Well, if you're nutty enough to want it, it's yours. You've got the capacity, yeah?"

"Yes sir. Couple of options, I'll need to see the lay of the land first. Multiple Earth Wall up under it to rip them loose, a taijutsu-enhancing jutsu to destroy them physically, or maybe just throw some tags in."

"Tags? But—oh, right. You're the clan that throws tags around like popcorn at a kid's birthday." He chuckled and marked the job off, passing the sheet over as he did. "We heard the stories about the Chūnin Exams. Did you really level all four of their shoot houses?"

"Not...completely," Hazō said. "About three quarters on the first two, but after that we realized we needed to be more restrained so that there would still be cells to put the prisoners in. We saved most of the third one and only put a few minor holes in the fourth."

The man laughed. "My man." He hesitated, then leaned forward conspiratorially. "Look, I'm sorry, but I really have to ask: Is it true that you stopped on the fourth one because that Yamanaka girl made your brother strip to his underwear and dance the wiggyjiggy?"

"No!" Hazō said. "No, that wasn't it. We made a deal with them in advance. Smashed up their bunker a little so it looked like we fought and we passed the word around that we lost because Yamanaka grabbed Noburi and held him hostage. Didn't really happen, though."

"Uh-huh." The man seemed disbelieving. "Well, thanks for the story. You should drop by the Soggy Tag some time after the tournament. Wednesday is Tall Tales night, and every new crop of chūnin, whether from the Exams or not, have to play." He winked. "There might be a bit of booze involved, too."

Hazō grinned, somewhere between nervously and gratefully. "Sounds like fun, I'll be there. Thanks."

"Thanks for making all the other villages look like a bunch of wet noodles," the chūnin grunted. "I particularly love hearing any story about those Cloud bastards getting it."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

OliWhail said:
After a couple minutes hovering near the mission desk waiting for the visibly pregnant woman on duty to be free, Hazō spotted his chance and strode up. "Afternoon, ma'am!" he began, pulling a large sack of ryō from a storage seal at his belt. "Who should I talk to about contributing to mission bounties, miss...?"

The loud jingle-thud of cash hitting the desk earned him a sharply raised eyebrow. "Misses Kato. What mission are you looking to bump up the reward for?" she asked with something like trepidation.

"Uh, well, I don't actually know yet - do you have any till'n'fills available?"

A second eyebrow joined Kato's first. "Huh. Let me take a look." She scanned quickly down a couple sheets in front of her, mouthing silently to herself as she read. "Yeah, three of 'em," she confirmed after a moment. "You want to set up extra bounties on them?"

"Exactly. I'd do them myself, but with my uncle's birthday and the Chuunin Exam Tournament coming up, I'm completely swamped, you know? Would 10,000 be enough to double the rewards being offered for them?" Hazō asked, gesturing to the money on the desk.

Kato's eyebrows - Hazō noticed a thin scar running through the left one - had gone from surprised to mildly concerned. "Uh-haha, um, yes. Yes it would. They're only, what, a few hundred or a thousand each?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Well, in theory the number of Leaf sealmasters is more or less at a rough equilibrium so over the course of many years the number of sealmasters dying to sealing failures should be roughly balanced by the number of sealmasters joining the trade. More random explosions does sound like a good time though, so you won't see me complaining :p
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm hoping someone else becomes the blademonster summoner, and they just keep on chanting "wHeRe Is He?"

Gotta farm those thousand yard stare points after all ;P
 
Oneiros said:
Problem with talking to the Yakuza is we don't anything about the Leaf Yakuza. Or if we can even contact the Mist Yakuza. I'm personally in favor of continuing to grow our current relationship with the Mist group since we already have a working relationship plus the fact they will need active support to take control of fire countries underworld
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We didn't know anything about the Mist Yakuza. We found out and built a relationship, quickly. It's not as if we have to choose one or the other, either. Think of this as a prime opportunity to build a mutually beneficial relationship with them since we have a shared enemy right now.
 
Remove ads
Clans in Leaf
  • Informational
    • QTesseract said:
    Another question, sorry. Do we know the relative population of voting clan vs non voting clans? I would assume the latter is larger due to the number of dead and semi dead clans (uchiha, senju, etc) but a tradition of adoption could sway that I suppose.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    There are 42 recognized clans in Leaf. Of these, 18 have seats on the Clan Council: Hyūga ; Kyoshō; Inuzuka ; Kurusu ; Uchiha ; Motoyoshi; Amori; Hagoromo ; Aburame ; Minami; Gōketsu ; Sarutobi ; Akimichi ; Yamanaka ; Nara ; Kei; Senju (Tsunade); Uzumaki (Naruto)

    Of the remaining 24, several of them are semi-dead, having only 1-3 members. Hazō does not know the exact population of any clan other than Gōketsu, Senju, and Uzumaki, and there is no plausible way for him to obtain that information short of trying to obtain the tax rolls, either by bribing someone or by breaking into Hokage Tower and stealing them. Either of these actions would be shatteringly stupid. Even getting the exact number of semi-dead clans would involve a great deal of work that he does not feel is a good use of time right now.
     
    Last edited:
  • Informational
    • eaglejarl said:
    There are 41 recognized clans in Leaf. Of these, 17 have seats on the Clan Council: Hyūga ; Kyoshō; Inuzuka ; Kurusu ; Uchiha ; Motoyoshi; Amori; Hagoromo ; Aburame ; Minami; Gōketsu ; Sarutobi ; Akimichi ; Yamanaka ; Nara ; Senju (Tsunade); Uzumaki (Naruto)
    Of the remaining 24, several of them are semi-dead, having only 1-3 members. Hazō does not know the exact population of any clan other than Gōketsu, Senju, and Uzumaki, and there is no plausible way for him to obtain that information short of trying to obtain the tax rolls, either by bribing someone or by breaking into Hokage Tower and stealing them. Either of these actions would be shatteringly stupid. Even getting the exact number of semi-dead clans would involve a great deal of work that he does not feel is a good use of time right now.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    At the risk of upping your future aspirin bill, I read this and thought "Ah, we can probably hire or adopt these people in a few months..."

    E: Not now of course, definitely not now. We have fun things to do!
     
    Last edited:
    eaglejarl said:
    Can't promise to use them, but suggestions welcome. What have you got?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Oh, sweet.
    • The failure created a small creature, which managed to escape into Leaf. No-one knows where it went or what it can do, aside from the (very worrying) speculations based on what the failed seal was supposed to do. Leaf enters a state of small emergency.
    • The failure itself was nothing impressive — an ordinary explosion — and happened weeks ago, but the sealmaster who witnessed it started exhibiting irregular behaviour, opening a bizarre business and taking her research into a similarly bizarre direction. Yet all merchants to whom she spoke agree that it's a brilliant idea...
    • All wine glasses within Leaf walls exploded violently. Thankfully, it was nighttime.
    • A twenty-meter radius around the seal was plunged into abnormal, undispellable darkness. It seems to be just that, darkness: objects (including the sealmaster who caused the failure) are able to enter and exit it with no noticeable issues or unnatural changes...
    • A loud voice, loud enough that it's heard by a large fraction of the town, speaks a message:
      • A Leaf secret that was not meant to be known at large.
      • A secret that was not meant to be known, period.
      • A worrying message warning of impending doom. No-one has any reason to believe that it's accurate, and the sealmasters dismiss it easily; everyone else, on the other hand...
    @MadScientist, @Vecht, @MMKII, @Lailoken, want to pitch in? @faflec, inventing interesting but nonlethal failures increases the odds that Kagome survives.
     
    Last edited:
    eaglejarl said:
    One thing you're right about, though: We've been lax about showing sealing failures by NPC sealmasters throughout Leaf. Thanks for bringing that to our attention; I'll have a failure in the next update to catch up with all the times there probably should have been one before this. I'll also talk to the other QMs about having a general rule for "make one roll representing all the NPCs to see if anyone screwed up in a meaningful way and/or died today." Over time this will kill off some of the Leaf sealmasters, and possibly Kagome, thereby raising Hazō's value. Hopefully it won't obliterate too much of the city in the process.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I am definitely interested in seeing more Sealing Failures, especially if they do not in the process kill characters we love.
     
    Noumero said:
    Oh, sweet.
    • The failure created a small creature, which managed to escape into Leaf. No-one knows where it went or what it can do, aside from the (very worrying) speculations based on what the failed seal was supposed to do. Leaf enters a state of small emergency.
    • The failure itself was nothing impressive — an ordinary explosion — and happened weeks ago, but the sealmaster who witnessed it started exhibiting irregular behaviour, opening a bizarre business and taking his research into a similarly bizarre direction. Yet all merchants to whom he spoke agree that it's a brilliant idea...
    • All wine glasses within Leaf walls explode violently. Thankfully, it was nighttime.
    • A twenty-meter radius around the seal was plunged into abnormal, undispellable darkness. It seems to be just that, darkness: objects (including the sealmaster who caused the failure) are able to enter and exit it with no noticeable issues or unnatural changes...
    • A loud voice, loud enough that it's heard by a large fraction of the town, speaks a message:
      • A Leaf secret that was not meant to be known at large.
      • A secret that was not meant to be known, period.
      • A worrying message warning of impending doom. No-one has any reason to believe that it's accurate, and the sealmasters dismiss it easily; everyone else, on the other hand...
    @MadScientist, @Vecht, @MMKII, @Lailoken, want to pitch in? @faflec, inventing interesting but nonlethal failures increases the odds that Kagome survives.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    • Your hearing gets swapped with a random person's hearing for 2 hours.
    • Your hair turns into lettuce leaves and falls out. Run!
    • Your stomach is now filled to bursting with live piranha.
    • The barrier between worlds shatters and craps out 10 tons of acidic ectoplasm onto your location.
    • Every piece of metal within 50 meters is now made of chocolate.
    • You smell like rainbow scented roses for a day. Unfortunately, the chakra worms really like rainbow scented roses.
     
    Last edited:
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top