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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Going out for another long-term mission so we can go around and do spy network stuff (including snooping around for scrolls) is something we should probably keep on the medium-term docket. We've got a few short-term things left to do here in Konoha and then we'll want to do that and also probably another basement arc.
 
We should probably first ask Keiko if the Pangolins know if the Capybara have gotten a new summoner yet. If only to tell us the level of resistance to expect.
 
Oh god please don't take any more plan makers. There was a sudden dearth of plan making expertise after OliWhail left us as it is :p
 
QTesseract said:
Think about it. If you made Faflec a GM, the GMs would remember everything.
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I mean, you just imagine the agent with sufficient fidelity, then throw it into the subconscious background with the others until it's time to pull it back out and see what it's gotten up to while you were concentrating elsewhere.

That's how everybody does it, right?


faflec said:
I'm not going to mind-control them, then we wouldn't be able to get good updates.

Also it would be horribly unethical.
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There really isn't a hard line between mind control and sufficiently motivated persuasion...
 
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eaglejarl said:
The sound had drifted through his dreams for weeks, ever since The Scroll, and playing it, sharing it, birthing it into the world to be heard by and shared with those closest to him was an act of...not joy, not even close. A matter of necessity, of certainty and requirement, of contributing the ten-thousand-and-seventh piece to a pattern that couldn't not be.

The music reached the end of that part of it that was audible in this time and place, and Hazō removed the flute from his lips. He looked down at Akane and allowed his lips to curve upwards.
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We just played a part of a seal. This is a piece of a pattern. We are performing a seal. We have been performing a seal.
 
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Chapter 291: New Powers Rising
  • Threadmarks

    • February 12, 1069 AS

    "A month tops," Mari said decisively. "They can't afford to let us recover, and they know we have genius sealmasters who could overturn the balance a second time. Don't even get me started on the Seventh Path. The second the skytower seals start failing, the smarter summons will figure out the game, and then our threat rating spikes like the target's libido when I'm on top form."

    Hazō felt a chill go down his spine. Not because of Mari's seduction talents—which, granted, were terrifying in their own right—but because Keiko had warned him of this very thing. If they wanted to maintain their foothold in the Summon Realm, which they badly did, and if they wanted to do so without enabling more genocide, or doing anything else which would cause Keiko to flat-out deny them use of her scroll, they were going to need some serious strategising.

    On the plus side, even if all those enemy summoners decided that the Pangolins' former weapons suppliers were a priority target to be eliminated forthwith (which, frankly, would be entirely fair from their perspective), the Gōketsu Clan was already on multiple villages' hit lists. Nobody wanted to face a Leaf with a second skywalker-scale innovation, and what were a few more enemies on the scale of an incoming world war?

    "No telling which village will go down first," Mari went on with ruthless informativeness. "Jiraiya's spy network just isn't the same without him. Hyūga and the Mizukage's trick bought us time, but you can't count on that kind of thing for long when there's a counter-narrative running and you're simply not there to defend against it."

    "Do we at least know what we're facing?" Hazō asked. "The other villages must have had their own Kage elections by now."

    "Sure," Mari said. "The proclamations have all gone out, and let me tell you, kids, we're in for some fun times.

    "Rock had a line-up of candidates ready the second news from Nagi Island came in. The new Tsuchikage's called Shirogane Kitae, from the Shirogane swordsmaster clan. Ruthless, focused, allegedly the world's greatest swordswoman (which I can believe since the survivors of the Seven Swordsmen are all men). Jiraiya's spies think Ōnoki knew he was on a countdown, picked out a bunch of potential successors, and had the Tama give them optimised training way in advance. And let me tell you, when a Tama dedicates themselves to something… it's scarier than dating an abusive Yamanaka. I'd pity them if they weren't about to kill us.

    "What we know with no need for speculation is that she's a hungry shark. Ōnoki of Both Scales managed to keep the factions balanced, but geopolitics being what it is right now, the sharks are completely dominating the turtles. Rōshi and Han are under a lot of pressure. Leaf's hoping some of the other candidates will turn against Shirogane because she was only just chosen over them, but I doubt Ōnoki would have been that stupid."

    "Ouch," Noburi said. "So on top of a hostile Tsuchikage, they've got a bunch of mini-Tsuchikages running around ready to replace her if she goes down."

    "Yeah," Mari said. "Hell of a mess we've got waiting for us."

    "What about Sand?" Hazō asked. "They'll be Rock's first targets. Will they be ready?"

    "They've got issues. They took a big hit at Nagi Island, and their population was already lowest of all the villages. A woman called Chiyo's interim Kazekage, but if they take too long to get on their feet, they might find themselves buried underground."

    "What's she like?" Noburi asked.

    "She's Sand's Tsunade. During the war, she was the only one who could keep up with her, medicine-wise. Supposedly, they had some epic poison-offs. Main difference is that while Tsunade punches holes through mountains, Chiyo's mistress of Sand's secret art of puppeteering."

    "Puppeteering," Hazō said flatly. "Mari, tell me that's not as ridiculous as it sounds."

    "That's not as ridiculous as it sounds," Mari said in a deadpan voice. "Imagine for a second a ninja made of rock-hard lacquered wood," she continued more seriously, "simultaneously wielding blades, and needles, and poison gas that it's immune to itself, and a bunch of lethal weapons you've never heard of, and that doesn't die if you punch a hole through its chest or blow off its head. Genjutsu-proof too, for obvious reasons. Oh, also it doesn't have to be shaped like a human. It can be anything. Got it?"

    Hazō nodded shakily.

    "Now imagine fighting a bunch of those at the same time, all coordinating their attacks. Then remember that a skilled Sand puppeteer can use a bunch of those at the same time on their own.

    "Yeah," Mari said. "It's not just the killer environment that lets Sand hold its own against the heavyweights."

    "Good thing they're on our side," Hazō said.

    "Trouble is," Mari said, "Chiyo's getting on. Now, Ōnoki's no-longer-living proof that age is no object, but still…"

    "So that just leaves Cloud," Noburi said. "What crazy surprises have they got in store for us?"

    "Hoo boy," Mari leaned back in her chair. "Well, for a start, there isn't a Raikage anymore."

    "You what."

    "That's what I said too," Mari agreed. "They've split the position in two. Now they have a religious leader, the Grandmaster, and a secular leader, the Shogun. I'm not impressed with the names myself, but they seem to work great for propaganda."

    "Two leaders," Noburi said. "How the heck?"

    "Our spies think it's Cloud's weird religion thing. Killer B's never exactly been known for his piety, so maybe they figured it would cause a rift if they just went ahead and made him Raikage?"

    "Well, sure, but two leaders?"

    Mari shrugged. "Don't ask me. I just work here."

    "So we sort of know about Killer B," Hazō said. "Or at least someone does. That's another thing I'll need a clan head briefing on. Who's the Grandmaster?"

    "Woman called F," Mari said. "Mostly seen wandering the continent scaring the bejeezus out of political leaders by turning up in their territory uninvited, because she's the kind of woman who went toe-to-toe with Jiraiya. I heard him complaining about her a few times. There are rumours that she's a summoner, but no one knows for sure because no one's stupid enough to make her bring out combat summons. Most reports of her appearance are in bars, gambling houses, cheap hotels, and the occasional hot spring. Frankly, she sounds like more of a hedonist than I was in my misspent youth, which is to say three or four years ago. How somebody like that ends up in a position of power is beyond me."

    Hazō politely chose not to comment.

    "That said, she seems like she's on the apolitical side. Given Killer B should feel like he owes us, it's possible they can be persuaded to stay out of the war. At that point, it really is our diplomats versus their crusader faction."

    "Oh, she's a Raiyoke, which just makes things more complicated," Mari added as an afterthought. "At least Ami has the decency of being openly insane. I don't know what F's excuse is."

    "Raiyoke?" Hazō asked.

    "Cloud's Mori. Ingenious, but utterly lacking in curiosity. Spend most of their time sitting in mountaintop monasteries rehashing centuries-old religious debates. They are supposed to shell out some brilliant insights, but you have to prod them hard.

    "Seriously, though. No curiosity. Wandering the continent looking for pleasure. That's the kind of world we live in."

    "It really is," Hazō said wearily. "So what's number five?"

    Mari apparently got his meaning.

    "Sand's Yodomi. They're not the ones who invented the puppets—I think—but they're the ones who optimised them into unstoppable war machines. With that kind of technological advancement, you'd think Sand would be ruling half the world by now.

    "I vaguely remember hearing somewhere about the power of technology to change the world," she added thoughtfully. "Never mind, I'm sure it'll come to me.

    "Anyway, they're inflexible. You give them the thing, and they'll do the thing, but they're not going to innovate. Where the Mori find it hard to generate new ideas to begin with, the Yodomi will come up with new ideas but then go, 'Eh, what we've got is good enough.'"

    Hazō had discovered the exact antithesis of his personal belief system. No matter what humanity already had, it was never good enough to stop looking.

    -o-​

    "You've got to be kidding me," Kagome said. "I know we last had you checked for lupchanzen only a week ago, but…"

    "I don't know," Mari said. "We need to make some kind of progress. Sand's pushing hard for a formal alliance, but I can't say I want to leave all our foreign relations in Hyūga's hands. Going out and looking for potential allies has generally worked out for us."

    "Akatsuki," Kagome hissed. "The ultimate untrustworthy stinkers. Or have you forgotten the part where they killed Jiraiya? I could blow them up a thousand times and it wouldn't be enough."

    "None of us are going to forget," Hazō said. "I promise. But remember what's at stake, Kagome. They're powerful, and they have a reason to seek world peace. We need world peace, and frankly, we need it now. If we die, Uplift dies with us. If everyone else dies, there's no one left to uplift. All these people we're helping? All the people we plan to help? If it meant saving their lives, I'd jump into the Naraka Path and shake hands with the King of Hell himself."

    A thought occurred to him, clicking randomly sideways into his brain.

    "Assuming he has hands." Hazō said. "Strictly speaking, there's no reason a creature from a different type of reality should have appendages like ours, or appendages at all. We may have to develop a common language, or communicate in pictographs…"

    "Hazō?"

    "Sorry. Anyway, they have summoners, right? That means we can use our own summons to communicate with them. Best-case scenario, we can join hands—or other appendages of analogous function—and get them to do what Pain tried to, only with less torture and murder, and more diplomacy and creative insight."

    "Ah," Mari said. "The 'I have a really big stick and those are my mates standing behind you' school of diplomacy. You have learned well."

    "I'm against it," Kagome said. "It's not a matter of whether the stinkers will stick a dagger in our backs, but when, and how hard. A poodle's not going to stop trying to suck out your vital fluids just because you pet it."

    "Noted," Hazō said. "Especially the image, which was not something I needed in my mind at all ever. Next step: if we do want to communicate, how do we do it? Do we get Hyūga's go-ahead? Do we do it without telling him because he hates missing-nin and will probably say no?"

    "You know," Mari said after a few seconds, "there's always the third option."

    The oil lamp lit, and burned bright.

    "Get them to talk to us!" Hazō exclaimed.

    "Bingo."

    "All right," Hazō said. "So if we can make it look like they contacted us first, that's very different to us bypassing Hyūga and doing something he can declare as treason. They contact us, we talk, then we bring the matter to him 'as soon as we could', and there's a big difference between him rejecting a new idea from us and rejecting a proposal from the world's single most powerful force."

    He grinned the grin of a man invited to formulate a cunning plan with high stakes and high rewards, one which would probably even involve making lists.

    "Now we just have to figure out how."

    -o-​

    February 13, 1069 AS

    One disadvantage of having strangers (or near-strangers) having regular access to the compound was that they'd been forced to disable certain parts of the trap array, for fear of guests being spread finely across a three-dimensional area after taking a wrong turn after dark (or, for civilians without advanced memory training, potentially any turn). Kagome had nearly had a heart attack, and it had taken the entire clan to convince him that rapid progress in Uplift was worth a small sacrifice in security (and the main threat to the clan, the Hyūga, could not be deterred by hidden traps anyway).

    One consequence of this disadvantage was the potential appearance of uninvited guests who didn't happen to be infuriating trap-ignoring jōnin. And while the clan was pretty much resigned to Ami turning up at some unexpected point to throw chaos into their lives like a chakra basilisk into a dance-off (or had she finally gone home to do the same in Mist?), even with that mental preparation, tonight's guest left them floored.

    Faintly red eyes concealing both vulnerability and strength of will. Exotic pink hair with tiny twists below the ribbons binding her front braids. A shy, awkward smile, and the best friend always by her side.

    Emotion hit Noburi in a tidal wave. Shock. Guilt. Admiration. Longing. More guilt. His mind locked up as his heart pounded.

    The stunned silence lasted an entire second, until Akane broke it with a sudden dive, somehow moving from seated to standing to an enormous hug in one single motion.

    "Yuno! It's so good to see you again!"

    "Y-You too," Yuno choked out after a second of being physically and probably mentally overwhelmed. "Um, this is really nice, but you can let go now."

    Akane disengaged. "We're just having dinner. Come eat with us—we're having Kagome's Classic Don't-Ask-What's-In-It Stew. It's delicious as long as you take the name literally. Here, you can sit next to me."

    "You can't put a young female guest in the third seat to the right," Noburi said distantly. "What would people say?"

    "You remembered," Yuno said softly.

    Noburi remembered.

    "Akane, can you move down one? Second place should be fine for someone who's…?"

    "Sixteen," Yuno said. "I had my birthday right after."

    "Yuno," Kagome said meditatively, reading the atmosphere with skill to shame any mole. "Yuno, Yuno, Yuno. Oh, right, that Yuno. They explained it to me afterwards. You got engaged to Noburi, only the marriage was a sham all along and nobody told you, and then Noburi said something stupid and broke your—"

    "Kagome," Mari said in a neutral voice that could melt steel, "why don't you go get our guest a bowl of soup?"

    "Y-Yeah," Kagome stuttered, his sensitivity rapidly improving. "I'll just go do that, shall I? And then after I've brought her the soup, I think I'll go sort the spice cupboard, make sure we haven't run out of anything."

    "Good call," Mari said smoothly.

    "Ahem," Hazō cut in. "With that sorted out, maybe we should have a new round of introductions. I mean, given you're here, I guess you sort-of know who we are. But after everything that's happened, I think it would be a good idea to have a fresh start, right?"

    He gave Noburi a quick but meaningful look. Noburi wasn't in a state to respond.

    "I'm Hazō, head of the Gōketsu Clan. I formally invite you to join us for dinner."

    Yuno cast a glance at the actual adult in the room, and Mari nodded. Yes, Hazō of all people was head of the clan. Noburi wouldn't have seen it coming either.

    "I'm Mari," Mari said. "I know it's a little late to introduce myself now, but I hope you'll understand."

    Yuno nodded.

    "The gentleman getting you your soup is called Kagome," Mari added.

    "Akane," Akane said with a smile. "Phew, it's so good to get that weight off my chest."

    Everyone turned to look at Noburi.

    "My name's Noburi," he muttered. "Sorry."

    Yuno nodded without comment. She did not meet his eyes.

    "And I'm Gasai Yuno," she said to round it all off. "I hope you remember me."

    They'd only known each other for a little over a month. They'd barely held hands.

    "The Pangolin Summoner isn't with you," Yuno stated.

    "She married into another clan," Hazō explained. "These days… she usually has dinner with them."

    "Which clan?" Yuno asked quickly. "I need to speak to her."

    "Why is that?"

    Yuno swallowed. "Because she's the only one who can save Isan now."


    "I think you'd better start at the beginning," Mari said. "Maybe we can help."

    Yuno took a deep breath.

    "The village changed after you took the scroll. We'd fulfilled our purpose… but that also meant we'd lost it. Everything was still. Quiet. Empty. We had nothing to live for anymore.

    "That's when the High Priest revealed himself. He told us that now that we'd fulfilled Akio's mission, we'd proved ourselves worthy of following Ui Isas himself. He said he was having visions of Ui, receiving wisdom and guidance on what to do next. Of course we listened to him." She smiled ruthfully. "He was charismatic, and everything he said did sound wise… and what else were we supposed to do?

    "Isan's not the place you remember. The High Priest defanged the Clan Council, demoted them to advisors. He told us we needed to modernise. He sent out spies into the outside world, gathering weapons and scrolls for us to study. You won't know, but the mountain is very rich in mineral deposits. We just never had anyone to trade with.

    "The smiths are working night and day. The Yoshida have been pushed into adopting those who can learn sealcrafting. The High Priest even wants to recruit missing-nin. He says that if one group of missing-nin managed to help us fulfil our original purpose—with a lot of guidance—then we should be able to find more for our new one. He's made an alliance with a group called the Sacred Spiritual Seekers of the Scaly Sage.

    "The biggest thing is unity. The High Priest keeps talking about unity, and how Ui had called upon him to unite the people." Yuno's voice rose in anger to the point where Akane shrank back. "And do you know what uniting people means? It means turning them against everyone who won't fit in! It means making them feel good about themselves by pushing out loners, and people who 'refuse to be happy', and people who are 'unclean'!"

    She seemed to realise she was shouting, and looked down at her bowl in embarrassment. She took a few spoonfuls of soup.

    "So I left," she said quietly. "There was no room in the High Priest's village for people like me. I turned missing-nin, just like you. I wandered around killing things—I never knew there were so many interesting kinds of blood—and then I heard that the Pangolin Summoner had just won the world's greatest ninja competition. How could she not? And then I found out her name, and the village she'd finally joined."

    Mari frowned. "This High Priest figure. There wasn't a position like that back when we were in Isan. Is it someone we knew?"

    "No," Yuno said bitterly. "Turns out none of us did. Until the day he became High Priest, his name was Azai Shūsuke."

    It took a few seconds for this to soak in.

    "Damn," Mari spat. "How did I not see it? He was right in front of me! No wonder I couldn't stop Hyūga. I'm a failure of a politician."

    "Mari," Hazō said, "if even someone like Takahashi, who'd lived in the village all his life, didn't spot it, then no wonder you didn't either. You can't blame yourself for everything."

    You could tell from Mari's expression that she disagreed, but fortunately they weren't going to rehash that argument in front of Yuno.

    "If you mean the head of the Takahashi Clan," Yuno said, "he hasn't said a word since the Revelation. I don't think anybody knows what he's thinking, not even the other Takahashi."

    "Is… is that why you're here?" Noburi finally found his voice. "Because the Pangolin Summoner's the only one who can challenge his religious authority?"

    "Yes," Yuno said. "I guess the prophecy isn't done with her after all."

    "But how did you get in here?" Hazō asked. "It might be hypocritical for me to say this, but Leaf doesn't have an open-door policy for missing-nin."

    "Getting inside was hard," Yuno admitted. "Satsuko hadn't had human blood for over a week, and the patrol ninja were very rude. But I'm not stupid. I told them I had very important strategic information—and eventually I persuaded them to let me see the Hokage. He was open, and accepting, and considerate, and he asked me all kinds of questions about Isan."

    She paused.

    "I know this might sound bad, but every single one of them deserves whatever they get. Every single one of them could have reached out to me.

    "Not that I told him everything about Isan up front—I learned a lot about bargaining chips while I was out being a missing-nin. But then he said something I couldn't have imagined. The Hokage offered me his own nephew's hand in marriage. A summoner candidate, just like…"

    "Nara Keiko," Mari inserted.

    "Just like Nara Keiko had been. I haven't exactly explained my status back in Isan to him—it's not something I want to talk about with a total stranger—so I don't have any trouble imagining what he's after."

    "What did you say?" Noburi asked, trying to feign casualness and failing oh so hard.

    "I told him I'd take time to think about it," Yuno said. "I will never offer up my heart just because an authority figure tells me to."

    Then her eyes snapped onto Noburi's. She held his gaze for the full 2.8 seconds.

    "Besides… I've been told the Village Hidden in the Leaves has a second summoner candidate."

    -o-
    ​
    Gasai Yuno
    Looks: *****
    Pros: Beautiful, caring, sensitive, enduring, older girl
    Cons: Wrong village, occasionally scary, already broke her heart(?)

    -o-
    ​
    You have received 12 + 1 = 13 XP.

    -o-
    ​
    Your sealing research is progressing, and will be covered later since the update is already late.

    Noburi has not yet begun his summoning training as he needs Dr Yakushi to confirm that it's safe for his bloodline. Dr Yakushi has suddenly become too busy to carry out the necessary tests.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on Saturday 12th of October, 9 a.m. New York Time.
     
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    • Velorien said:
    That's when the High Priest revealed himself.
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    Oh boy. That can't possibly be good.

    Velorien said:
    "The biggest thing is unity. The High Priest keeps talking about unity, and how Ui had called upon him to unite the people." Yuno's voice rose in anger to the point where Akane shrunk back. "And do you know what uniting people means? It means turning them against everyone who won't fit in! It means making them feel good about themselves by pushing out loners, and people who 'refuse to be happy', and people who are 'unclean'!"
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    Yep. That was not good.

    Okay, do we know who this guy is?

    Velorien said:
    "Getting inside was hard," Yuno admitted. "Satsuko hadn't had human blood for over a week, and the patrol ninja were very rude. But I'm not stupid. I told them I had very important strategic information—and eventually I persuaded them to let me see the Hokage. He was open, and accepting, and considerate, and he asked me all kinds of questions about Isan."
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    ... Is Hyuuga going to kill us? This is the sort of thing that might be treason not to tell him about. Okay, he isn't going to kill us, or he would have done it before letting her talk to us.

    So we probably need to come clean to him. There is no way we are keeping this secret. Everything we do with Isan needs to be tower approved from this point.

    --

    So assuming control of Isan is wrest back from the High Priest, I suggest we start trading with them. We will have Monopoly and Monopsony, so we will get stupidly favorable terms. Total economic control, done by impossible to trace storage seal Ninja caravans.
     
    I agree, a fantastic update, @Velorien.

    Where to begin?
    • War in a month. I insist that we run my Modified Implosion Seal idea by Kagome next chapter.
      • Rock needs to be nuked, no way around that. Let's erect a Skytower over it, put a 90-SIN there rigged to explode, and then move to another part of the continent as it's counting down. Let's see how they deal with 78 simultaneous sealing failures.
      • Sand: Chiyo seems like a workable ally?
      • Cloud is being a progressive, nice. Grandmaster F is one of the leaders, even better. Contrary to Mari's words, we do know she is the Mara Summoner. Let's contact her via the Seventh Path, may be able to negotiate something sensible.
    • Cloud's Raiyoke are ingenious but incurious, Sand's Yodomi are creative but complacent. Interesting. I'll analyse that in the context of Paths and the Five in a few hours.
    • Contacting Akatsuki is greenlighted.
    • I think Yuno is a fellow protagonist, with how contrived her journey here was.
      • Azai did his thing. Didn't we see that coming? We definitely did see he's only pretending to be an idiot.
      • Isan is trying to become a force to be reckoned with in a fairly competent manner, and they seem to have contacted one of Orochimaru's organizations.
      • But Yuno sold it to Hiashi, so Noburi is getting married now. We certainly don't want the Hyuuga to be the ones directly plugged into Isan's society.
     
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    Kagome grew up in Cloud, time for him to explain to us what their weird religion is. Also how does one work in intelligence, learn about weird shit but doesn't know some of their village summoners? Kagome needs to tell us everything he knows!
     
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