Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Hmmm. Maybe Akatsuki accidentally'd us with the worldwide super genjutsu....
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
Hmmm. Maybe Akatsuki accidentally'd us with the worldwide super genjutsu....
I'm still assigning significant probability to the possibility that we have always been under the worldwide super-genjustsu...
zap lunch
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Chapter 285: Futures Bright and Dark
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Are you sure I can't change your mind?" Hazō asked. "I know you want to keep your neutrality, but I have a signed document from the Fifth Hokage that offers Orochimaru a full pardon. Were I to release that, it would offset the reputational costs you would incur by joining us."
Doctor Yakushi smiled. "I'm delighted to hear that! You'll be offering it to the Clan Council, yes?" The smile disappeared and he suddenly looked concerned. "May I suggest that you offer it sooner rather than later? Not doing so could offer your enemies a chance to accuse you of subverting the will of the then-Hokage by not making it known. They could make a strong case for charges of treason in such a case."
Hazō's smile slipped before he could clamp down on it with the Iron Nerve. He had intended to hold the pardon as a trump card to be played at the optimal moment, but that appeared to be off the table.
"Of course," he said. He rose, forcing himself to smile. "But, enough of that. You clearly don't find it convincing, so I won't keep you." He nodded to the older man, who had remained seated, leaning back in comfort with one arm up on the top of the couch. "I'm sorry to hear that you won't be joining us, Doctor. I will, of course, be refusing your offer—it sidelines the Gōketsu too much and therefore misses half the point of the exercise, which was to gain political reputation by being the spearhead of biosealing. I also won't be able to devote clan funds to your research, as they will be needed elsewhere. Let me know when you change your mind—sky-high funding and training in unique jutsu are still available if you join the clan." He turned to Mari. "Could you set up a meeting with Shikamaru at his convenience? I'm sure some of the Nara will be interested in working with us on researching what we've got already. Oh, and one with Lady Tsunade. Lord Hokage promised her a ridiculous amount of funding, so some of that money will be available now that Dr Yakushi has said he's not interested in researching what we've got."
"That is not what I—"
"Indeed," Mari said with a smile, not looking at him as she ran over his words. "She was very interested in some of the humanitarian ideas you were discussing with her. As I recall, she even said that the single most important effort from her point of view was to build walls for civilians, with the second being...was it clean water? With a bit of research, the Purifier seals can probably be repurposed to purify water instead of air. Given that those are her priorities, I'm sure we can divert some of the medical research budget to seal research instead."
Dr Yakushi raised an eyebrow at her but forebore to comment.
Hazō turned back to their guest. "Thank you for your time, Doctor. I'm sorry we couldn't come to an arrangement. Let me know if you change your mind, but if you're going to do so then please do it quickly. Kagome-sensei is busy on other things at the moment, but he should be available again sometime in the next couple of days. As soon as he is, I'm going to tell him to purge the basement."
"...'Purge the basement'?"
"Yes. It's much too dangerous to keep down there unless there's value to be extracted from it that benefits the Gōketsu. Noburi isn't experienced enough to do the research on his own and I'm not sure who else would be. Since you're not interested in working with us it's better to just destroy it all."
Dr Yakushi's eyes widened. "Destroy it all?"
Hazō nodded, the Iron Nerve freezing his face in an expression of solemnity that he'd worn once, back on a skytower with Akane as they watched the sunrise. He knew that it made him look inhuman to a keen-eyed observer—normal people's faces transitioned from one expression to another, flashed varying microexpressions in the middle of different macroexpressions, and so on. The Iron Nerve's utter stillness was a creepy mask in the hands of those untrained, but a useful one nonetheless.
"Yes," he said again. "I'll have to talk to him about methods; we can't have him using any of his larger tools, as they could collapse the entire place and potentially drop the house into a sinkhole. Still, he's awfully good at explosives, especially firey ones. I'm sure that he can burn everything down to the bare walls, top to bottom, without so much as scratching the foundation."
Dr Yakushi seemed at a loss for words. "You would destroy the work of the greatest medical researcher of all time. The single most brilliant expert on life extension, biotransplantation, and crossgenic synthesis."
Hazō shrugged. It was an Iron Nerve shrug and therefore doubtless screamed of falsehood to Dr Yakushi's eyes, but it conveyed the intent. "Yes? I mean, it's not like it's doing us any good, and the place is dangerous."
Dr Yakushi licked his lips, his eyes shifting nervously. "It's...possible that this plan could be unwise, even dangerous," he said carefully. "Orochimaru-sensei was a...lateral thinker, with high tolerance for the unconventional since his personal power was such that most things were far less dangerous to him than to lesser ninja. There could be things in the basement that would react poorly to explosives."
"Ah. Interesting. Thank you for the warning; I'll tell Kagome-sensei."
"Speaking of," Mari said, "I saw him at breakfast. He was excited about his current project; apparently he had a breakthrough recently. He said he might be done as early as this afternoon, so he might be done already."
"Excellent," Hazō said. "I'm sure he'll be thrilled to start on the demolition." He cocked his head thoughtfully. "Let's see...we went through the first few floors already and there wasn't anything particularly unusual in there. What do you think—could we just toss in a few youthenizers and call it a day? He'd need to start being careful on the bottom floors, of course."
"A youthenizer is a seal that Hazō invented," Mari told Dr Yakushi helpfully. "Giant ball of fire but not much pressure. Should be safe for burning everything to ash without damaging the walls." She turned back to Hazō. "Seems reasonable to me, but he's the expert. Ask him."
"I will." He cocked his head as a thought patently falsely 'struck him'. "Actually...you know, the cost/benefit on destroying the basement might change if we acquired some force multipliers. For example, if we had a Summoning Scroll in the clan then I'd probably be inclined to explore the basement with summons and only destroy it all if there was a danger of something getting out...by whatever means." He turned back to Dr Yakushi and gestured towards the door. "Let me walk you out."
o-o-o-o
"Well, that was...fun," Hazō said as the door closed behind probably the most infuriating man he'd ever met. Well, one of them. 'Lord' Hyūga probably still held the top spot.
Probably.
Mari snorted and turned back towards the living room. "You have an interesting definition of 'fun'."
Hazō shrugged and followed along. "Gotta look for silver linings. Speaking of which, that octocat corpse that Noburi killed is pretty intact. Could you have someone check it for poison, acid, whatever and, if it's clear, get it stuffed? I want to give it to Ami."
Mari laughed. "Can do."
They reached the living room and Hazō flopped down in one of the overstuffed armchairs with a sigh.
"Speaking of Noburi," he said, "I hope he's okay."
Mari nodded. "Lady Tsunade prioritized him into her queue because he's a medic. He's getting literally the best care in the world."
Hazō blew out a long, tired breath. "Yeah, I know. It still sucks that he got hurt."
She nodded. "Yes."
They sat in silence for several long seconds, and then Hazō determinedly pushed himself upright.
"Okay, enough moping," he said, forcing determination into his voice. "Let's do stuff! For the first time in ages we aren't buried in an immediate disaster or running on someone else's schedule. Time to actually make a difference."
"Okaaaay...." Mari eyed him nervously. "What exactly did you have in mind?"
"We get a medium-term mission, say a couple of weeks. Maybe some kind of beast-clearing thing. Really, it's a pretext to do some guerilla civil engineering. Build MEW walls for small towns and villages. Clear varmints in the area. Use explosives to prep their fields, that kind of thing. Then I've got a thought on some experiments I want to run. For example, how we could build basic shelters really fast: Make a foundation with MEW, put an Air Dome on it. Spray it with alcohol-slaked lime and clay from a misterator, clean off some spots for door and windows. Hit it with a youthenizer to harden the shell. Collapse the Dome. Voila, a very simple and very safe house."
His former teacher frowned. "Are you sure that works?"
Hazō shrugged. "No? That's why I want to test it. I've also got a weapon in mind that might be a counter to skywalkers and I need to test it waaaay out in the boonies. And, since money is an issue for us, I want to set up some salterns on the coast."
"Salterns?"
"Yeah, it's basically a chimney in the water. You let seawater flood in to fill trays, then you block off the entrance. Freeze it slowly, then throw away the ice so that you only have brine. Boil that—Akane's Elemental Mastery jutsu should help, and we'll have plenty of firewood after I blow up a few miles of trees. After we boil it all, what's left is salt. Scrape it out, put it in storage seals, repeat. Voila: a ton of money. We'll just need to figure out a way to launder it so that the Merchant Council doesn't get pissy."
"I've been working on them, actually. Give me a little time and I may be able to co-opt them to be our rubber stamp."
"Say what now?"
"The Merchant Council is our largest problem overall—"
"Really? Personally, I was going with the Hokage-blood-purist-xenophobic-nationalist-who-hates-our-guts being the biggest problem."
Mari shook her head in annoyance. "No. He's a problem, but far from our biggest. He respects the law and he's in a very weak position politically. He can't afford to alienate any of the clans, and that puts sharp limits on what he can do. He can and will target us and he can cause us a lot of trouble, but he needs to keep it deniable. He can't strip us of our clan status or send ANBU to murder us in our beds. That would set a precedent that the other clans could not tolerate. Also, this new collection of clanless ninja—and I am amused as anything that they call themselves the KEI—are going to be a thorn in his side. I'm not saying we're safe, but we're safe-ish. At this point, our biggest problem is increasing our powerbase.
"There's three aspects to that: Increasing our income, increasing our overall wealth, and increasing our ninja power. Sounds like you've got ideas for the first one, and over time that will take care of the second. The third covers both the number of ninja in the clan and how diverse a swath of abilities we can acquire, since you've demonstrated that synergy is the path to power.
"Bringing in new ninja is problematic. We can only adopt two clanless per year for tax reasons, but anyone that we bring in from the clans will have divided loyalties and represents a potential spy. I see two potential ways around this. First, we convince other clans to use their adoption slots and then we promptly adopt from them. It's a legal fiction that interferes with the other clans' tax benefits; it won't work for long before it gets stepped on, but it could net us a few good people in the short term, which would be a big help at tax time.
"The second approach is that we bring clanless in as unrecognized branch family. We build a lot of fancy guest housing and other buildings on the property and we hire them as live-in caretakers, managers of civilian gardeners, and so on. It's really just a pretense for us to give them money and a place to live. We start hosting monthly gambling nights where we bring all our 'totally-not-clan' clanless ninja in. Somehow, our clanless happen to win an amount of money exactly equal to the tax benefits that they would have gotten had they been clan ninja. Maybe they earn a generous and predictable bonus on top of that." She paused and cocked her head in thought. "Actually, we should probably make it open to any ninja who wants to show up. Makes it less of a fig leaf. Those who are not part of our group will somehow find their money draining away into our coffers.
"So, we've got all these clanless ninja who totally are not part of the clan even if they somehow end up receiving all the benefits of being in the clan and isn't that odd? We're paying them a salary to live in luxurious housing, we're recompensing their taxes and giving them the fifty-percent bonus that clans get, and we're funneling good missions to them. We 'invite them over for dinner' essentially every night—after all, we're allowed to throw parties whenever we want and invite whomever we want, right? We'll want to change it up...dinner, cocktail parties, salons, games nights, whatever. Our clanless are always invited, meaning that we're covering all of their groceries and they are bonding with us on the regular. There's a clear but unstated understanding that this cushy lifestyle is dependent on their first loyalty being to us. Once they've integrated a bit, we can start using them in whatever wacky schemes you have. The other clans could do the same thing but most of them probably won't, at least for a while, since it would require admitting that clanless are not actually inferior."
Hazō shifted uncomfortably. "From what Noburi and Keiko said, they...kinda are, in some ways. They haven't had access to as good an education, for one thing."
Mari shrugged. "So? Kagome loves teaching. He can run remedial classes. If any of them want to learn sealing and can convince him to take them, our explosives problem is solved and you two can focus on bigger projects. And if he doesn't want to teach them, we'll hire some civilians to do it.
"That takes care of ninja power. Money is the next problem. You've already shown that you have a ton of ways to make money, but we can't use them because of the Merchant Council and its equivalent in other major cities. The villages just don't have enough cash to satisfy our needs."
Vistas of excitement opened in Hazō' s mind. "So you want to get rid of the Merchant Council?"
She shook her head. "No. I want to co-opt them. All of our permit requests get quill-whipped through, everyone else's get stalled for months."
"That's...that's brilliant." He eyed his fire-haired former teacher with renewed respect. Not that he had ever stopped respecting her, but her expertise did tend to fall into the 'assumed and therefore unrecognized' category sometimes. And then she would pull out something like this.
She shrugged. "Not my first roundup. I shouldn't have split my attention between this and the politics before. Now that I've made a mess of that I need to focus on this and get it done as soon as possible."
"You didn't make a mess of the politics," he said firmly.
She made a throwaway gesture with one hand. "I'm not arguing it with you. Regardless, pace yourself as you start transforming Leaf so that you don't scare the other clans too badly. Society can only change so quickly without violating public sensibilities to the point where they unify in stopping it. And don't get overconfident: They're smart too, and they could easily kill us if they wanted to, especially now that Keiko's loyalties are divided. Right now we are protected solely by social norms and the desire of the clans to not rock the boat too much. Frighten them, violate those social norms too badly, and we're all thrown in a ditch by dinner time."
A chill went down Hazō's back. "Uh...right. I'll remember that."
She nodded, apparently satisfied. "Good. Now, you were talking about that trip. Who are you taking?"
He shifted in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable. "I was thinking me, Akane, and Kagome-sensei. Noburi needs time to convalesce and you're the obvious person to act as Clan Head while I'm away."
"What about Naruto? Didn't you want to adopt him?"
To be honest, that had rather slipped Hazō's mind. "I mean, of course. Yes."
She nodded. "Don't get your hopes up. I doubt he'll want to at this point."
Hazō blinked. "What?"
"Remember you told Ami to 'maximize our political power'? She created the KEI and installed Naruto as one member of the triumvirate that runs it. He's now the de iure head of the Uzumaki and will be arranging for a regent sharpish so he can be the de facto head as well, with a puppet to actually cast his vote in Council. He's also the hero of the village, holder of the biggest sympathy card ever, and one-third of the group that represents...what, a quarter of the ninja power in Leaf? A third?" She tossed the issue aside as unimportant. "He's enormously politically powerful at this point, he's got a serious hate for Hyūga after the way he got muscled out for the Hokage vote, and he's positively inclined towards us, but he loses a lot of that if he joins the Gōketsu. Doing so would tie him to our tarnished reputation and cost him the Uzumaki vote. There's no reason for him to become a Gōketsu."
"But...Jiraiya wanted him to."
She shrugged. "Maybe he'll do it at some point. I doubt it will happen in the near term." She grimaced. "Also, he's savvy but he's not terribly proactive. He's also a teenage boy; someone with the right skills could lead him around by his hormones without too much trouble, and Ami has the skills. She's savvy, political, has some seduction training, and has at least as much force of personality as he does, as well as better debate skills. She can get him to go along with nearly anything she proposes. Keiko, of course, will do whatever Ami tells her to. The KEI is basically Ami's group with the other two having minimal to no control."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Hazō sat, marinating in the implications, until Mari got up and went to bed.
XP AWARD: 5
It is now about 11pm.
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, September 11, 2019, at 12pm London time.
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[X] Continue the Plan
I am disappointed that we aren't making much more progress.
And, @MadScientist I apologized. I was wrong.
I am disappointed that we aren't making much more progress.
And, @MadScientist I apologized. I was wrong.
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- Location
- Omniverse #1345
[-] Continue the Plan
That was hilarious and probably more effective than I expected it to be. Mari should probably watch the house to make sure Kabuto doesn't try breaking in to "rescue" Oro's experiments on the off chance we actually do plan to do that.
As an aside we now need to figure out a way to get Naruto the PCJ and the others without breaking our agreement with them. Perhaps the fee for restarting the trade agreement once we have another summoner?
That was hilarious and probably more effective than I expected it to be. Mari should probably watch the house to make sure Kabuto doesn't try breaking in to "rescue" Oro's experiments on the off chance we actually do plan to do that.
As an aside we now need to figure out a way to get Naruto the PCJ and the others without breaking our agreement with them. Perhaps the fee for restarting the trade agreement once we have another summoner?
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Well that talk with Kabuto went much better than I expected. I'd like to concede that my models of Hazou and the nature of the situation were quite evidently incorrect, and I'll do my best to update on them for the next time something like this happens.
While the Kabuto scene was pleasantly surprising, the talks afterwards filled me with the giddiness of plans coming together. Now we just need to follow through and have a good time breaking this world over our knee.
(I also like how Hazou seems to think of SINs as a Skywalker counter. "With Skywalkers they can stay in the air away from explosions, but what if the explosion's so large it doesn't matter how far away they are from it?")
While the Kabuto scene was pleasantly surprising, the talks afterwards filled me with the giddiness of plans coming together. Now we just need to follow through and have a good time breaking this world over our knee.
(I also like how Hazou seems to think of SINs as a Skywalker counter. "With Skywalkers they can stay in the air away from explosions, but what if the explosion's so large it doesn't matter how far away they are from it?")
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Funny thing is it would work - nukes are actually large enough that some plane had trouble getting out of the blast radius in time; and they were running away from it as fast they are could from the moment it was dropped. Without warning the pressure wave would shred anyone in its path in the air.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
Behold the idea behind the AIR-2 Genie, a real-life anti-air nuclear missile, built back when air-to-air missiles were in their infancy and couldn't track for shit and everybody was freaking out about the idea of nuclear bombers jetting in and destroying everything so long as even one escaped.
Of course, tracking technology changed, but now that we have the wordcount I don't think I want to go with the same exact plan, persay. Now that we have the time to review the rules, it would be a good idea to determine precisely how big the radius needs to be; at 400m kill radius designing delivery methods that don't also kill the poor sap delivering the payload while also being undodgeable at the receiving end is...trickier.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- [REDACTED]
Shadow clones!
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Hazou: *invents flight*
Shikaku: Very interesting, but how do you intend for us to defend against them when our enemies copy it?
Hazou: Wait no heck I can fix this!
Hazou: *invents nukes*
Shikaku: Very interesting, but how do you intend for us to defend against them when our enemies copy it?
Hazou: Wait no heck I can fix this!
Hazou: *invents nukes*
Hey.
You know what Hazou just did?
Hazou just proved that if we give him enough to work with, he can hold his own against jonin social specs.
Isn't that beautiful?
You know what Hazou just did?
Hazou just proved that if we give him enough to work with, he can hold his own against jonin social specs.
Isn't that beautiful?
Dissonance
Luna's Luna
- Location
- Ginnungagap.
- Pronouns
- S/H/T
[X] Continue the Plan
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail
Can ya all update the timeline? I had no idea how much time occured in-universe for the dungeon crawl plus today's update.
Can ya all update the timeline? I had no idea how much time occured in-universe for the dungeon crawl plus today's update.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The basement wasn't very fun at times, let's prove to him that we know how to party! (And by 'party' I mean 'create world-changing weapons again')
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- Location
- Why would this be required?
On one hand it would be giving us a pretty powerful ally in Naruto and the clanless of KEI, on the other hand....Ami...about 50/50 chance on this being a good thing.