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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Glad we have the bolt-hole.

But, I think it is time to demonstrate a WMD, and get in Hyūga's good books. We might just have a chance to form a cordial working relationship. And, if we do need to run, having a WMD will be good to get them to let us run.

We're going to need to accept that we will be complicit in starting a war of conquest against Rock and Lightning. Hopefully, we can be there to hold Hiashi to his noble-sounding words.
 
I'm saddened that the Chunin Exam arc's positive effects almost entirely vanished in smoke, but that's the nature of people dying. Their previous efforts to make life better didn't ultimately matter.

We'll just have to see what Ami's been up to.
 
Ping me with any plans that (1) leave Leaf, or (2) make a serious pass at assassinating Hiashi. SIN testing optional (though preferred). Seeking out Akatsuki gets an automatic vote.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
I'm strongly considering testing SINs and having Mari present their potential to Hiashi. SINs would be a strong WMD that could keep Leaf safer on the global stage due to its city-killing potential, and since Kagome is the only person who can create them Hiashi has to keep us placated in order for them to be available.
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I mostly concur, but if and when we can demonstrate the power of SIN, we should also make it abundantly clear that the Gotseku will not sanction war much less any pre-emptive strikes.
 
Interesting developments. Not quite what we were hoping, but I'm all in favor of draining Hyashi's coffers into more productive pursuits like Tsunade's books. (And of course our sister's sister's plot is still coming, with whatever upsets that brings.)

My ideal scenario at this point would be to take this as an opportunity to get back out in the field and away from the Hokage. More good old ninja action, more seeing the world and learning new tricks, more helping people in person.

My worry with that is that, being in the field, we could end up undermined at home - or worse, outright killed. I hope we can cut off that possibility, in some way other than staying at home politicking indefinitely.
 
On the to do list before we peace the fuck out, if so:

0) "Hello yes, Mr. The Tower? The Gouketsu will be giving you Skywalkers for free please do not pay us thanks." Should buy us some time.

0.5) Send Hinata a marriage offer. This should buy us more time.

1) Do Ami's thing since we no longer have anything to lose.
2) Search our basement for snek uncle's horcrux. If we get a Snek Uncle out of this perhaps he can fix it. Snek Uncle possesses great wisdom.

????

Armadillo Initiative: Noodle incident 2.0 after leaking the purchase of our hidey hole. River? Fuck that noise, go directly to Rain, do not play Go, do not collect 2000 ryo, do not stop until you hit a squad of border patrol motherfuckers and announce you're here "to see Akatsuki" we come in peace etc etc.

Armageddon Initiative:

HAZOU: Kagome. Get the Implosion Seals.

KAGOME:
 
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So...Did Tsunade betray us? Without even telling us?
Let's hope she isn't going to talk to us after this, because it probably ends with us splattered to the wall, because i'm going to vote for a"explanation" of how we're feeling.

Noumero said:
On the other hand, this is an exciting development, a challenging high-stakes problem to solve, a situation in which the thread may actually consider high-risk plans. It may motivate us to overturn one of the contexts in which Hazou exists, be that voting for him to go missing-nin, plunging the village into civil war by assassinating Hiashi, or whatever else we could come up with.
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Let's be real for one second, we're not going to kill Hiashi and survive.
The hope is that Tsunade spared a thought about us and made clear we were not to be killed(Something i kinda doubt happened from her current behavior) or that Naruto makes a direct assassination too difficult, meaning Suicide Missions, hopefully something we could survive IF(And this is a big if) Hiashi is so monumentally stupid/politically busy to put us in a suicide mission that it's actually survivable.
 
Okay, so there seem to be three major camps on discord:

  1. Assassination
    • Exactly what it sounds like, kill Hiashi or help Naruto do it asap
  2. Leave
    • Again, exactly what it sounds like. Flee, go missing nin (Maybe to the Akatsuki if we can find them...).
  3. Stay
So the problem I have with 1 is that even if we can pull it off, it's a major loss to Leaf (Hiashi's abilities are quite useful against infiltrators.) And we are more likely than not to be found out afterwards. I don't think I need to say that will end badly for us. 2 Ignores the civilians - they can't keep up to come with us, and we can't leave them behind for T&I to deal with. Not to mention Naruto is actually loyal to Leaf and is likely to smack us and drag us back before anyone even notices we tried to flee.

Currently it doesn't look like anyone is particularly inclined to shift from their initial position. We'll see if that changes.
 
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Byzantine said:
it's a major loss to Leaf (Hiashi's abilities are quite useful against infiltrators.
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Bigger loss to leaf is all the civilian lives that he doesn't give a shit about. Or do you imagine now that he has power, he's going to change his stance on them being literally inferior lifeforms unworthy of licking his sandals?

Byzantine said:
Ignores the civilians - they can't keep up to come with us, and we can't leave them behind for T&I to deal with.
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Again -- way more at risk than just a couple civilian lives here.
 
I would like to note that the only reason Hiashi doesn't kill ASAP is because he can't, if we make him the "Hokage that conquered the world and brought Pax Konoha" with our WMDs, he'll be free to murder us without a care, because he would have that much political weight.
He could even do it in front of everyone without consequences.
 
Vecht said:
Bigger loss to leaf is all the civilian lives that he doesn't give a shit about. Or do you imagine now that he has power, he's going to change his stance on them being literally inferior lifeforms unworthy of licking his sandals?



Again -- way more at risk than just a couple civilian lives here.
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I'm worried about how Hazou would react emotionally, rather than the numbers game. Frankly what we need to do is convince Hiashi civilians have actual uses and value, which I suspect is actually possible given he bases his beliefs on (flawed) facts. We'll probably never convince him they are equal, but we should be able to do enough to improve their lot.

Really all we need to do is make an argument that more and better cared for civilians means more ninja. Hiashi values clan ninja the most, but he does see value in clanless. Education reforms should be possible, since that can be phrased as improving the clanless and making up for any holes in clan teaching.

Lord Marshal said:
I would like to note that the only reason Hiashi doesn't kill ASAP is because he can't, if we make him the "Hokage that conquered the world and brought Pax Konoha" with our WMDs, he'll be free to murder us without a care, because he would have that much political weight.
He could even do it in front of everyone without consequences.
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You are both underestimating our value and overestimating how much Hiashi cares about us as political opponents.
 
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Byzantine said:
You are both underestimating our value and overestimating how much Hiashi cares about us as political opponents.
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Hiashi hates us for what we are, not what we do.
No amount of the second will wipe clean the first, it's a matter of principle for him, meaning that if we give him the power to kill us, he'll kill us.
The problem with Hiashi was never us being political opponents, or it would be just a matter of changing side, we're not Leaf in is mind, therefore he need to clean Leaf of our presence when he can (With no particular haste, he's a pragmatic man after all).
 
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@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail I note I am less than amused by the way Naruto was sidelined with no warning to us on the matter. It would have taken all of five minutes to have him adopt one of Akane's parents to his clan long enough for the vote, but we were told it wasn't needed as he was allowed to vote, and Hazo spent a lot of time looking up clan and tax laws. How exactly did he miss that? The adoption process is effectively immediate, so there wouldn't have been any problem doing so. And we had several days to have had Naruto fill out a form and turn it in. As a simulation I just feel this is... too stupid for Hazou, Mari, Naruto, Tsunade, Shikamaru, Asuma, Keiko and literally everyone else who knows the situation to have all missed.

I find it very... ungenerous to our knowledge and abilities that Naruto got sidelined instantly like that. And that he didn't speak up during the tie. Since if his vote is advisory... Well, when do you need advice more than when there is a tie?

See this post by @OliWhail: Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest, which while I agree was not binding colored the resulting conversation, especially in light of this post by @Jello_Raptor: Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest where he proposes this trivial solution to the problem. Because of the conversation around the topic we never thought had to explicitly put it into a plan.
 
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Byzantine said:
Not to mention that formally in Japan you are considered to have increased in age on the first of the year, so Naruto *would* be 15 for legal purposes, including voting. But even ignoring that if there was even the slightest chance this was a problem we should have, during the past week, has Naruto adopt one of Akane's parents or some other adult civilian he trusts. The process is effectively immediate.
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We've been doing birthdays for a few hundred chapters so I'm not really sure the EN does it that way. Eh, oh well.
 
MMKII said:
We've been doing birthdays for a few hundred chapters so I'm not really sure the EN does it that way. Eh, oh well.
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Yeah, I realized that and deleted that bit.

Still unimportant - adopting a civilian is a single form that takes effect immediately. I cannot see how "doing smart things..." wouldn't have covered having Naruto adopting one of Akane's parents or something. It only needs to last long enough for the vote.
 
Byzantine said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail I note I am less than amused by the way Naruto was sidelined with no warning to us on the matter. It would have taken all of five minutes to have him adopt one of Akane's parents to his clan long enough for the vote, but we were told it wasn't needed as he was allowed to vote, and Hazo spent a lot of time looking up clan and tax laws. How exactly did he miss that? The adoption process is effectively immediate, so there wouldn't have been any problem doing so. And we had several days to have had Naruto fill out a form and turn it in.
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I mean, i'm more surprised that they directly told one their only two S-rankers "Fuck you, you don't get to vote" plainly and clearly without any sensible excuse, in a world where Naruto is the only reason Leaf is actually in a secure position.
It's like both they and Naruto himself don't understand how goddamn important he is in the grand scheme of things, then again, Leaf clans were always idiots, as the situation shows.
Oh, who am i kidding, it's all Tsunade fault.
 
Really, Tsunade did say she would chuck her vote wherever if we didn't figure our shit out. I suppose we should take her at face value more. No hard feelings there, not really. Guess you don't really give a shit about us compared to your own pursuits, thats fine.

The hard feelings came before that: I really cannot believe that she let them do that to Naruto! Really, thats actually infuriating. Her own vote I can understand , but letting them just boot Naruto out like that is fucked up.


Get the fuck out of here Tsunade, you absolute sell out.
 
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Man at least wait until Jiraya's body finishes cooling before doing his godson dirty like that.

Cold Tsunade, real cold.
 
I love how Tsunade says 'I don't like war' and Hiashi's reply is 'I'll conquer half the world, after which the other half can't beat us in a war.' :p
 
MMKII said:
Really, Tsunade did say she would chuck her vote wherever if we didn't figure our shit out. I suppose we should take her at face value more. No hard feelings there, not really. Guess you don't really give a shit about us compared to your own pursuits, thats fine.

The hard feelings came before that: I really cannot believe that she let them do that to Naruto! Really, thats actually infuriating. Her own vote I can understand , but letting them just boot Naruto out of the room like that is fucked up.

Get the fuck out of here Tsunade, you absolute sell out.
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Fuck it, Hard feelings yes!
For the entire quest she whined and whined on how everyone else was an idiot, and politics was made of idiots, and she was sick and tired of people being idiots and selling each other out in the perfect example of someone that saw too much and decided to live by "my way or the highway"...But the second a good deal came, she showed herself like all the other people she whined about, someone ready to sell out her principles like anyone else.
More subjectively, she decided to sell out younger idealists for material gain, after watching her whole life people selling out younger idealists for material gain and making things worse, and then whining about it the whole time, calling everyone else idiots.
What? helping people makes it okay? What does she think the others did it for?
Worse of all? It's just a stupid move.
When war will start, and the war will start sooner or later, all this "money" she was promised will go into the war efforts, like always, and nothing will change, even if maybe she will be capable of saving the Ninja-oriented projects.(If she doesn't die).
She sold out a clan whose reason to exist is to help people in exchange for help from someone that fundamentally doesn't care about her dream, and therefore sooner or later will abandon it, and now we need to work on WMDs instead of actually building hospitals.
 
Awesome chapter @eaglejarl. Outcome aside, it was a great read, your framing device for the election scene was very clever, and you really built the tension well. Stellar work.

In terms of our proposed next steps:
1. Assassinating Hiashi is a pipe dream. I give it under 5% chance of success, and then basically a negligible probability of it not being traced back to us. And even if it doesn't, the consequences are going to be incredibly dire. Only way I can see it work is if we somehow convince the Akatsuki to do it for us, but that's a much longer-term project.

2. Leaving Leaf should be a backup plan at best. We'd have a significant force of the world's best trackers chasing us, and selling out to Rock or Cloud is unlikely to lead to a better situation than we're currently in with Hiashi. We could Skywalk over the ocean, or go to Bear, or try to join Akatsuki, but those are desperation moves. Let's not make them unless we really have to.

3. Staying seems doable. With how much emphasis Hiashi put on unity and mending fences, he can't really turn around and start bullying us. We're now squarely in Asuma's faction, and any attacks against us will be perceived as a betrayal after everything that's happened. We're also too valuable as military assets, and Hiashi clearly understands this with his comment about Noburi. So, I'd say we're safe until after the war. It's what will happen afterwards that's concerning.

The real question is - if we stay, and are on a timer, what is our endgame? Or alternatively, how much do we want to make Pax Leaf happen vs trying to minimize damage caused by the war.
 
Roomba said:
3. Staying seems doable. With how much emphasis Hiashi put on unity and mending fences, he can't really turn around and start bullying us. We're now squarely in Asuma's faction, and any attacks against us will be perceived as a betrayal after everything that's happened. We're also too valuable as military assets, and Hiashi clearly understands this with his comment about Noburi. So, I'd say we're safe until after the war. It's what will happen afterwards that's concerning.
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Stop making sense, damn you! I want to see the world burn in righteous indignation!
 
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