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
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
You shut your mouth. Mommy is just fine and we're going to burn to the ground anyone that tries to hurt her.
Right, I was more thinking that the only major event I could think of that would merit that level of jounin kill-off would be a large group of seditious jounin, but it's clear that the whole group of jounin was not, in fact, seditious, or else they wouldn't have fought each other.
I suppose it's possible the numbers were there to ensure that the smaller number of seditious jounin ended up getting killed off by loyalists, who were supposed to survive? I'm not sure.
- Location
- Canada
But she's probably in T&I.
eh, I'm not sure they'd torture a high ranking Jonin because her Genin son defected.
I think it would be more likely that they'd send her against us (obviously as backup for Zabuza or the like). Hunter work is good money to pay her debts with, and proving loyalty by killing dissenters is a thing. she might even be so disappointed in us for defecting that she'd want to kill us pay or no.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
Hm. That would be one way to protect Mist from our burning need for retribution. Then she can just join us to live in the swampy hellmouth.
- Location
- Phoenix, AZ
Fully agree on perma-stealthed, I'm just afraid our stealth isn't comparatively high enough for it to work great against any ninja (should work on animals and villagers most of the time though). At the moment, the only skills I can think of which MIGHT make us more valuable to keep at home than in the field are being the only medical ninja or a sealmaster, neither of which are easily achievable atm, but both of which seem worth sinking points into if we can get training in them. I agree it's unlikely we'll get out of field duty too easily, especially as Shikigami said he wants to make us jonin level, which I think he said meant two months-ish of field missions? Two possible solutions to this:
- Kill two birds with one stone by figuring out a massive benefit to the village which is only possible with our bloodlines, e.g. make ourselves necessary in village construction or town diplomacy or digging. I'm drawing a blank on how to do this though.
- Convince Shikigami to come on the missions with us. My memory of Naruto is that the genin were normally sent out with a jonin. Is there a strong reason we think Shikigami will be staying at the village while his team does a mission? Him being with us would add quite a bit of safety I think.
Rihaku
The Internet
That's way too risky, I can't imagine they wouldn't just assassinate the seditious jounin instead of bothering with something as uncontrollable as this.
I can imagine they'd send her against us, assuming her tracking and stealth skills are sufficient to avoid notice by Konoha, but I seriously doubt the Mist leadership is paranoid / incompetent enough to believe that a group of otherwise unassociated jounin, genin, and chunin all entered that mission with the intent to defect from Mist. Obviously once a victorious jounin faction was established, the other ninja would be forced to fall in line on pain of death.
I'm pretty sure our Mom is much more loyal to us personally than to Hidden Mist, but the GMs could easily have changed that. Obviously we would feel substantially less reciprocal angst if her loyalty to an arbitrary political entity were lower than her love for her son.
- Location
- Canada
On her own, of course not. with Zabuza Momochi, ultimate hunter assassin watching her every move? Maybe...
Rihaku
The Internet
It should work against virtually all genin (except maybe Neji and the like), since 5 is peak genin / baseline chunin level.
The GMs already said the jounin will be staying at base camp and sending out dudes on missions. Maybe we can change their mind, it would certainly improve our personal safety. But we'd lose agency.
- Location
- Phoenix, AZ
Do you think the improved safety is worth the lost agency? I think so, but I'm also perfectly fine being a follower instead of a leader and suspect that'd be something which might make people enjoy the quest less (at which point it's not worth it).
ETA: if it reduced our safety for him to be with us (e.g. destabilized the village) then I wouldn't want him with us. I suspect this is the reason he'd want to stay at home instead of go out with his genin. It will probably be worth devoting some thought to addressing this issue (if it is the reason he's staying, I suspect we might find out in the update tomorrow)
Last edited:
- Location
- Canada
Hey, if they do send him, they won't send him alone.
What? did you think they'd send just one Jonin, even the Demon of the Mist, against a force that at their last count consisted of 4 Jonin, several Chunin, and over 6 squads of Genin? [insert Mass Effect Joker laugh clip here ]
ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
So, the question is, were we sent to die to get rid of us, or were a group that included some powerful ninja sent to die for a reason, and the people they wanted to get rid of were selected to make up the group?
If the second, then us running may have messed up a larger plan, which may have consequences for Mist (plan failure), and mean some other plot is in play. Are there any people who can take advantage of ninja blood sacrifices, summon up hoards of ghost ninjas, or rebuild us into mind controlled war golems?
If the second, then us running may have messed up a larger plan, which may have consequences for Mist (plan failure), and mean some other plot is in play. Are there any people who can take advantage of ninja blood sacrifices, summon up hoards of ghost ninjas, or rebuild us into mind controlled war golems?
Rihaku
The Internet
I just don't think the GMs would allow it because a jounin is such a huge safety blanket. The world will be structured in a way where the jounins' optimal play is to sit at home.
Eh, given that they're sending him against potentially 4 jounin (we had 4 before entering the swamp), sending someone who could make it 5v1 seems pretty unlikely. I don't even think Zabuza has great odds against 2 jounin. Even if he's been upgraded from canon, so have all the other jounin, and the gap between elite and normal jounin doesn't seem that great. Plus Shikigami is also an elite jounin. And 6 chunin probably aren't irrelevant either.
I just can't see them getting a huge force through Konoha patrols, though. It's extremely unlikely that the average hunter-nin is anywhere near Zabuza's proficiency in eluding patrols, and I doubt Konoha nin are so incompetent that they wouldn't be able to catch a large group whose elusiveness depends on the skill of their weakest member. Plus they have the Byakugan.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
We got a group of at least 12 genin and 4 jounin past their patrols, so...
- Location
- Phoenix, AZ
True for now (afterall, he needs to establish his authority and it doesn't make sense for them to risk their strong ninja as scouts to start). However, if we find out exactly why Shikigami is staying at home, then solve that problem, the QMs should let him go on missions with us unless they want to give up on the idea of a quest in which each character (at least jounin level) acts rationally. At the very least, I think this is worth thinking about and proposing a solution during our rest period after a mission to the swamp and to the town.
Last edited:
Rihaku
The Internet
27, but they were tailing us basically from the start and we only escaped because we went into the Swamp of Death. Furthermore, their pursuit put us in a position so bad where even a jounin was vulnerable to being slaughtered by the crocs. Our presence should have put them on alert too.
If they're forewarned of another Mist incursion, for example by anonymous letter with verifiable corroborating high-level Mist intel, it might be Hyuuga Hiashi on call instead of Random Inuzuka #4.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
On Hazou's Mom, I would expect a Mist representative to inform the families of the ninja force of their tragic and regrettable deaths. Meanwhile, they rush as hard as they can to covertly ensure our deaths. Just word getting out of what Mist did to us would probably be a pretty big hit to them, plus they would lose the loyalty of all of the families.
- Location
- Canada
assuming of course that it really was a suicide mission and we haven't just been tricked into willingly defecting. in which case mommy might come to tell us how violently displeased she is with our life choices. for that matter, even if it was a suicide mission, they'd still tell her we willingly defected if they had to tell her anything.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Who?
In case I haven't said this before: my knowledge of canon comes mostly from fanfic and the wiki. I've never been much for manga, so I didn't go that route; I tried to watch the anime but just couldn't stand it -- the ridiculously slow pacing and Naruto's obnoxious personality made me bail sometime around the end of the bridge fight. So, yeah, if there's something odd in an update that I write, it might just be that I didn't know the canon well enough.
She's alive right now. While writing story post #1 I became way too attached to her to have her just absently whacked offscreen. Besides, I have plans for her.
That's the spirit!
*sniff* Our little psychotic assassin-child is all grown up and proactively swearing firey vengeance. I'm so proud.
Rihaku
The Internet
The number of battles that actually end in total annihilation of any side is very, very low. I don't know if anyone would buy what they're selling. Of course, the credibility of any given story is far from the most important thing when you've just lost 1/3rd of your jounin force. Sending 6+ further jounins into enemy territory would be almost laughably irresponsible. A PR hit is bad; becoming an irrelevant power when you border Fire and Cloud, the two strongest nations, is suicide.
We must constantly remind ourselves that they are acting under the same conditions of scarcity and uncertainty as us, and soberly analyze the cost-benefit balance of any given course of action. This will eliminate the wilder elements of speculation and make our predictions much more accurate.
Mist decision-makers probably don't even know whether or not we're alive, since they have no way of knowing until a tracker-nin follows the path to the end, survives verification of our existence, and then communicates with them via a trusted method. For all they know, we could have died in Fire weeks ago.
Rihaku
The Internet
This is extremely improbable, for reasons I have already addressed in #1507. Furthermore, given the magnitude of Mist losses, it is extremely likely they would prefer to recover assets if they can. A contrived scenario where mother kills son due to a misunderstanding may fit in a soap opera, but basic communication skills on either side would make it pretty unrealistic.
Also, our mom isn't stupid, nor would any jounin blindly believe what they've been told. Especially with motivated cognition entering the mix.
The Mizukage post-Timeskip, who overthrows Yagura in canon. She was mentioned in the profile we got of prominent shinobi around the world.
Last edited:
- Location
- Yes.
Yeah, I know she's alive right now. Doesn't mean she's enjoying that.
- Location
- Canada
Fourth(? I think?) Mizukage, and canonically one of the leaders of the Mist Rebellion. She has two separate bloodlines at the same time (the Lava and Boil element bloodlines), and has a running joke involving misinterpreting half the stuff her assistant (a Jonin with a stolen Byakugan) says as being a crack at her age or lack of a significant other. other than the joke though, she's a highly competent Jonin right now, as any Kage candidate would have to be.