Personally I'd be perfectly willing to make an exchange of secrets with her regarding exactly how it happened. The Kurosawa secrets aren't especially valuable to me.
 
Personally I'd be perfectly willing to make an exchange of secrets with her regarding exactly how it happened. The Kurosawa secrets aren't especially valuable to me.
Yes. I'd thought about telling her all details of the Iron Nerve conditional on her committing to ensuring it doesn't backfire on us and in exchange for a specific favour, but ultimately didn't implement it. @faflec, what's your opinion?
 
Granted, we may not need to... it's Keiko sending us to her, after all. There are no favors between those two. Though, I don't really like the idea of leaving ourselves in her debt, even if it's not explicit.
 
Personally I'd be perfectly willing to make an exchange of secrets with her regarding exactly how it happened. The Kurosawa secrets aren't especially valuable to me.

Ami being Ami (and Hazou not being a social-spec), I'd almost expect this to end with her inferring his secrets solely based on the fact that he proposed the exchange under these circumstances, without needing to give anything in exchange.
 
Pssh, you people.

Why are you worried about us owing Ami any favors when we can just take Keiko hostage and make Ami do whatever we want?

Threatening people has to work at some point, I'm sure.

E:
Action Plan: This Is A Good Plan
175 words

Clear everything with Keiko first.
  • Take The Keiko hostage. Deposit her into one of the new safe houses.
    • Feed The Keiko as necessary.
  • Enter negotiations with Ami regarding Keiko's release. Convince Naruto to loom threateningly behind us while we do so.
    • We will go pretty damn far to get what we want.
  • If the previous part went well:
    • Take a few Rock ninja hostage.
      • Clear this with Honoka first.
  • Find an inn.
    • Deposit the Rock ninja in the inn.
      • Ensure it is a Hyuuga owned inn first.
        • Collapse the inn.
          • Boast about being the Stone Stone Cold Killers.
  • Ask to meet Hinata.
    • Pretense: You have information about the people who collapsed the inn. (Technically correct.)
      • We will go pretty damn far for this meeting. Specifically as far as Bear and we invite her to join us there.
        • Picnic time: make use of your copious amount of romance skills and seduce her.
          • Clear this with Jiraiya's smut novels first.
  • Wonder where you went wrong in life to have done these things.
    • Clear this with Kagome first.
 
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Yes. I'd thought about telling her all details of the Iron Nerve conditional on her committing to ensuring it doesn't backfire on us and in exchange for a specific favour, but ultimately didn't implement it. @faflec, what's your opinion?
We've never been "of the Kurosawa" so technically we wouldn't suffer official consequences from doing this...that being said, I still wouldn't do it. Reasons include:
  • The Kurosawa Clan will murder Hana for giving away said secrets to us. She was part of the Kurosawa and so is bound by the contract, and her telling us even the limited stuff we know would have major consequences for her if it got out. Which it clearly did.
  • Ren is gonna be fuckin' miserable dealing with the hardliners reminding everyone why missing-nin are missing-nin and why the whole alliance is a disaster.
  • Our clan is going to be angry with us for giving away clan secrets, however not-as-angry-as-usual since they're technically our personal secrets.
  • Everyone in general is going to be less trusting of us since if we were willing to give away our own clan's secrets to a foreigner who knows what we'd do to their secrets. Granted, it's muddled since technically it's between different clans of the same village (Kurosawa and Mori) but it still looks really really bad (see: Mist Drain Incident).
Of course, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that we're giving it to Ami in a presumably private setting, but the fact that we're doing it at all gives her this impression, and she's a competent social-spec who will absolutely milk this for all it's worth. Including, but not limited to, blackmailing us.
 
Pssh, you people.

Why are you worried about us owing Ami any favors when we can just take Keiko hostage and make Ami do whatever we want?

Threatening people has to work at some point, I'm sure.

E:
Action Plan: This Is A Good Plan
144 words

Clear everything with Keiko first.
  • Take The Keiko hostage. Deposit her into one of the new safe houses.
    • Feed The Keiko as necessary.
  • Enter negotiations with Ami regarding Keiko's release. Convince Naruto to loom threateningly behind us while we do so.
    • We will go pretty damn far to get what we want.
  • If the previous part went well:
    • Take a few Rock ninja hostage.
      • Clear this with Honoka first.
  • Find an inn.
    • Deposit the Rock ninja in the inn.
      • Collapse the inn.
        • Boast about being the Stone Stone Cold Killers.
  • Wonder where you went wrong in life to have done these things.
    • Clear this with Kagome first.
Looks pretty solid, but I'm worried that the inn owner might be upset at us for breaking their inn. Can I suggest that we whisk Hinata away for a nice date in Bear Country to wrap up the plan?
 
Looks pretty solid, but I'm worried that the inn owner might be upset at us for breaking their inn. Can I suggest that we whisk Hinata away for a nice date in Bear Country to wrap up the plan?

Good points all around.

Plan updated:

Action Plan: This Is A Good Plan
175 words

Clear everything with Keiko first.

  • Take The Keiko hostage. Deposit her into one of the new safe houses.
    • Feed The Keiko as necessary.
  • Enter negotiations with Ami regarding Keiko's release. Convince Naruto to loom threateningly behind us while we do so.
    • We will go pretty damn far to get what we want.
  • If the previous part went well:
    • Take a few Rock ninja hostage.
      • Clear this with Honoka first.
  • Find an inn.
    • Deposit the Rock ninja in the inn.
      • Ensure it is a Hyuuga owned inn first.
        • Collapse the inn.
          • Boast about being the Stone Stone Cold Killers.
  • Ask to meet Hinata.
    • Pretense: You have information about the people who collapsed the inn. (Technically correct.)
      • We will go pretty damn far for this meeting. Specifically as far as Bear and we invite her to join us there.
        • Picnic time: make use of your copious amount of romance skills and seduce her.
          • Clear this with Jiraiya's smut novels first.
  • Wonder where you went wrong in life to have done these things.
    • Clear this with Kagome first.
 
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... Does the team actually ever succeed at Infiltration? Mari always flubs her dice. In 80 chapters they've failed every Infiltration so far, mostly with partial success of mission goals, and a near death experience.
 
[x] Action Plan: Continuing an Old Plan

Get the clan's approval first.
  • Everyone: Iwa's actions are weird. They didn't attack immediately, and are uncharacteristically treating civilians well.
    • Is Akatsuki involved? Maybe they obliterated Iwa, and they're trying to ingratiate themselves to Leaf.
    • Are they trying to subvert the population? How effective would that be?
  • Spend our time helping (and comforting) the current leadership (Asuma, Shikamaru, Chouza). Make ourselves indispensible to them.
    • Mari, what can we do to help lighten the burden of their tasks? Especially Asuma/Shikamaru, they must be at the end of their ropes.
    • Chouza's probably beside himself with survivor's guilt; he's one of the few surviving Clan Heads. Hazou still may be compromised, but someone else can surely check up on him.
      • Give OliWhail carte blanche to write this scene.
    • Suggestions for the top brass:
      • Investigate the relief party's story.
        • Send (airborne) scouts to the border, check what forces are amassing.
        • Find their lumber merchant to verify their story.
      • Contact Suna. They might have been hit too.
      • Leverage Ami, either by demonstrating Mist's already helping or by present a strong Leaf-Mist alliance to deter an attack.
      • Instate Asuma as Hokage, demonstrating Leaf's still unified and capable of fighting back.
      • Reveal Orochimaru's survival, as an invasion would pit him against Iwa.
    • Ask Mari to subtly prime the leadership into favoring the jutsupool idea, if reasonable.
Check up on snake, with clans approval
 
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... Does the team actually ever succeed at Infiltration? Mari always flubs her dice. In 80 chapters they've failed every Infiltration so far, mostly with partial success of mission goals, and a near death experience.

Do you actually want an answer to that or are you just commenting on things?

Because it's an easy question to answer but it will take away the suspense if you know what happens.

If you don't mind regardless:

Yes, they do. And it is glorious.

The Chuunin Exams.
 
... Does the team actually ever succeed at Infiltration? Mari always flubs her dice. In 80 chapters they've failed every Infiltration so far, mostly with partial success of mission goals, and a near death experience.
Yeah Mari is a crap infiltrator.

Edit: @roobee add checking up on snake and I'll vote for your plan

Also [x] Action Plan: OPSEC Breach Cascade
 
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@faflec How many ninja did mist lose in the assault on hidden swamp?
"If we assumed that Mist would in fact be the buyer, that meant that one or more of their top ninja would be tied up in Rice. Their combat power has been reduced significantly over the last year; a sizable group of ninja, including several jōnin, defected and hid in the Swamp of Death in northwestern Fire. With our permission Mist sent a task force to wipe out the defectors. All of the defectors were killed in this action, as was thirty percent of the task force.
I'm not entirely sure how many of the task force there were but given that Mist had ~1300 ninja at the start of the quest I'd imagine that something along the lines of 50-70 ninja were killed. Admittedly, that's a complete guess and isn't anything being put up to scrutiny. You can just as easily argue more people died.
 
@faflec Is preparing seal means Hazo will do it? Or Kagome? Alternatively, we can dump some of the clan's storage seals to be reused for our business.
 
@Oneiros Come to think of it, I can make a better eyeball. The Leaf-Mist-Akatsuki battle had Mist sending 3 S-class and 12 Jonins to fight (what they thought was) Naruto's team: 1 S-rank, 1 Jonin, and 2 Genin-Chunin. That's like 3-4 times the expected ninja force, since you'd want an overwhelming advantage to minimize casualties.

The Swamp of Death, as far as Mist knew, had something along the lines of 30-40 individuals, as several ninja were killed in the trip to the Swamp. Which means they'd send along the lines of 90-160 ninja, and have lost ~30 to 50 ninja (30%).
 
@faflec Is preparing seal means Hazo will do it? Or Kagome? Alternatively, we can dump some of the clan's storage seals to be reused for our business.
Good point; changed to "make preparations".
Here's a more bare-bones plan, I have a lot of room to add stuff so let me know if you want something added.

[X] Action Plan: Voices of the Out
Word Count: 297

Get the clan's approval first.
  • Keep supporting the refugee camp.
  • Meet with Ami at her convenience in an OPSEC-secure location.
    • Thoughts:
      • Keiko's been evasive about her bloodline. It's her right, but you can't help being curious...
        • She'd said it has "a purpose". She'd also said that interfacing with otherworldly entities requires extensive preparations, and indeed seemed very knowledgeable on this subject. Maybe she was talking about Summoning, but with this last revelation...
        • Could the Frozen Skein be providing the means to contact an entity from Out, which handles data-analysis?
        • If yes, do the other five cognition clans (the Nara...) work the same way? They all have similar thematic drawbacks, and if they're all designed...
      • Additionally, Keiko implied Ami may have unique insight. Aside from the FS speculation, any similarities between your personal peculiarities?
        • She made a point of implying that all of her masks are real. She also spoke as a chorus that one time.
        • That's somewhat reminiscent of that time you merged with your alternate-timeline selves...
    • Exchange pleasantries/updates on plots.
    • Main topic: Due to a sealing-related development, you've directly seen the truth behind the illusion of reality. A connection, to which Keiko referred as "calling up the universe", has remained. It produced some interesting effects. Any tips?
      • Confirm with Keiko whether you should reveal she directed us to Ami.
      • Don't reveal the IN clan secret. Don't mention the Scroll without a good reason either.
      • If Ami, too, seems evasive about the FS, mention your speculations to speed up the discussion.
        • Clarify that Keiko didn't tell us that deliberately.
  • Other projects:
    • Investigate Jiraiya's Leaf safehouses with Akane/Kagome. Consider visiting stashes near Leaf as well.
    • Make preparations for the MC-approved businesses.
    • Is Agent Snake alive? Invite her for dinner, try cultivating her as an ally/resource.
 
... Does the team actually ever succeed at Infiltration? Mari always flubs her dice. In 80 chapters they've failed every Infiltration so far, mostly with partial success of mission goals, and a near death experience.
We eventually just stopped trying. None of us are any good at it; we all have shit stealth as well.
 
But... It's her specialty. It's driving me nuts. She would never have made jounin if she was this incompetent at it.
Nah, Mari's fine at it. Just not the "sneak in" kind of infiltration that she's good at. Her specialization is social infiltration.

Things might have gone differently if we'd asked her to, uh, distract Joutarou and his other companion while we infiltrated.
 
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