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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Latrine group:
  • Research started.
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While it's never been confirmed in action plans, I have a link in my signature that gives in-character reasoning for Hazou to test metals for the Sanitation projects. That way we don't have to worry about dancing around the narrative reasons for why Hazou would want to avoid lead. That said, we may have to spend a fate point or two to retroactively have Kagome teach Hazou the dangers of shrapnel left in the body --which makes sense, Kagome's the Explosion Master.
 
Toilet group progressed, but mostly they got stuck on the flushing problem.

Plumbing also progressed, but last time it was mentioned, they were bikeshedding about choice of materials.
 
roobee said:
I interpreted this as have Goketsu and Akatsuki figure it out. Or in other words, yes.
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Kiba said:
Oneiros didn't bother to rephrase. Hazo and co are supposed to deal with the problem as if it was a "standard" sealing failure using "standard" method such as blowing it up, setting it on fire, sealing it with granite in accordance to Hazo's sealing expertise.
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Thanks for the explanation. I still don't accept it, however. "Let Hazō figure it out" is antithetical to the concept of the quest. We can handwave it when the decisions are trivial and it would be boring to micromanage, but there is no handwaving a major sealing failure.

Well, voting is closed. I guess we'll see how far Hazō's unaided agency gets us.
 
Velorien said:
Thanks for the explanation. I still don't accept it, however. "Let Hazō figure it out" is antithetical to the concept of the quest. We can handwave it when the decisions are trivial and it would be boring to micromanage, but there is no handwaving a major sealing failure.

Well, voting is closed. I guess we'll see how far Hazō's unaided agency gets us.
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*screaming in faflec*
 
Velorien said:
Well, voting is closed. I guess we'll see how far Hazō's unaided agency gets us.
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Here's the thing from my perspective: The only bit of information we get is a bioweapon plague.

So the only plausible thing that will happen is that when it escape containment, it will spread. Our options are at that point are granite seal-em-up or blow it up with fire jutsu or Itachi's specialthingiewhatever.

There's no creativity involved, and the hivemind is not exactly privy to the sealing blackbox, so it's not like we can come up with a clever solution based on whatever insight Hazo has.

Basically, there's no puzzle involved.
 
Hopefully we'll get more information about the sealing failure during this update and will be able to use that to figure out how to beat it. If it can escape from granite and survive being exploded, maybe it has a root or something as a weakpoint. Or maybe it's sensitive to low temperatures and can be frozen to death by EM.

If we don't either kill it or get more information on it this update, our best bet is probably just to keep throwing random ideas at it until either it dies or we do.
 
Velorien said:
"Let Hazō figure it out" is antithetical to the concept of the quest. We can handwave it when the decisions are trivial
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The way I figure. Even if Hazou fails Goketsu and Akatsuki might figure something out. I expected Hazou to come up with average and not genius solutions. And thought there's a decent chance that would be enough. And if it wasn't, well there isn't anything specific I woulda have told Hazou that I don't expect him to already think of. The decisions I could think of telling Hazou to do would be trivial, even though the event is important. Things like asking can Sasori help out, can Itachi eye flame the plant, adding a bunch more MEW, shoving the molten lava tube into the plant portal (this last one just barely rising above trivial with its slight creativity), etc.
If there was something smart I wanted Hazou to do, then I would have tried to get that in the plan.
 
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I'll note for myself I'm not really sure what we can provide to the sealing failure cleanup. We are simply not versed in the actual procedure, do and don'ts, etc. For obvious reasons. Our suggestions could easily be considered absolutely insane and suicidal by hazou, and we have no real way of knowing because we don't actually have the background on this stuff.

Which just means I, at least, feel horribly unqualified to be trying to give Hazou orders of how to handle the clean up when the NPC with no hivemind assistance should both understand the situation better than we do and know how to clean it up better than we do - because he's supposedly been taught it. Usually we can simply come up with good ideas to push into his head in spite of such contextual differences, but highly esoteric sealing failures? We got lucky and the qms were generous to show us the blotch jumped between people under the application of chakra. Without that I don't think we'd have ever stumbled on the solution of "scrape it off on the first applicable chakra beast we can find." This sealing failure falls under the category of "Uhhhh... I've got nothing. Hope the NPC can handle it or provide us more info we can build a plan off of next time?"
 
I mean...

Sanderson's First Law: An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

We've explictly been told that sealing can do anything. We have seen sealing failures cause effects at unspeakable angles to the intended seals. We are being told "this is a failure which is EXTRA SUPER UNPREDICTABLE".

We do not understand the magic. We have not been given the information to understand the magic; we get 5 second snippets out of what must be a ten-thousand hour learning curve, and that leaves us with our only recourse as "Hazou, figure it out yourself."
 
Kiba said:
Here's the thing from my perspective: The only bit of information we get is a bioweapon plague.

So the only plausible thing that will happen is that when it escape containment, it will spread. Our options are at that point are granite seal-em-up or blow it up with fire jutsu or Itachi's specialthingiewhatever.

There's no creativity involved, and the hivemind is not exactly privy to the sealing blackbox, so it's not like we can come up with a clever solution based on whatever insight Hazo has.

Basically, there's no puzzle involved.
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Byzantine said:
I'll note for myself I'm not really sure what we can provide to the sealing failure cleanup. We are simply not versed in the actual procedure, do and don'ts, etc. For obvious reasons. Our suggestions could easily be considered absolutely insane and suicidal by hazou, and we have no real way of knowing because we don't actually have the background on this stuff.

Which just means I, at least, feel horribly unqualified to be trying to give Hazou orders of how to handle the clean up when the NPC with no hivemind assistance should both understand the situation better than we do and know how to clean it up better than we do - because he's supposedly been taught it. Usually we can simply come up with good ideas to push into his head in spite of such contextual differences, but highly esoteric sealing failures? We got lucky and the qms were generous to show us the blotch jumped between people under the application of chakra. Without that I don't think we'd have ever stumbled on the solution of "scrape it off on the first applicable chakra beast we can find." This sealing failure falls under the category of "Uhhhh... I've got nothing. Hope the NPC can handle it or provide us more info we can build a plan off of next time?"
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huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Sanderson's First Law: An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

We've explictly been told that sealing can do anything. We have seen sealing failures cause effects at unspeakable angles to the intended seals. We are being told "this is a failure which is EXTRA SUPER UNPREDICTABLE".

We do not understand the magic. We have not been given the information to understand the magic; we get 5 second snippets out of what must be a ten-thousand hour learning curve, and that leaves us with our only recourse as "Hazou, figure it out yourself."
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I disagree.

Firstly, to address Sanderson's First Law: We aren't weaponizing a sealing failure, we are containing it: the magic isn't solving a problem in this context, the magic instigates it. If that wasn't allowed too, it'd essentially mean that stories about confronting the unknown are not allowed, which is obviously incorrect.

Sealing failures can do anything, but there are some statistical correlations that are known to us as well as to Hazou. For example, this rift is used as an invasion point by some kind of plant-like creature. While it's possible that the plant-like creature is an illusion cast by bladehorrors to mislead us, or not just a physical but a physical/memetic infestation that slowly corrupts all concepts it comes into contact with, or that it'll go away on its own if we leave it alone but if we hurt it too much its Elder God parent will come and smite this entire planet, or that it has an AoE assimilation field, or some other kind of esoteric nonsense, it isn't likely to be the case, compared to it simply being a plant-based monster.

To prepare for the worst-case scenario, we simply need to assume that it's the worst possible physical/plant monster permitted by known physics/biology that is still consistent with our survival up to this moment. Say it's intelligent, quantitatively superintelligent, capable of improving in response to damage, possessing a decentralized CNS, capable of detaching parts of itself which then become independent entities (capable of moving away from the rift & reproducing by assimilating EN's biology), capable of injecting people with a variety of substances whose effects vary from instant death to mind control, and capable of manifesting specialized tools for dealing with threats once it learned enough about them, including projectile weapons. This creates an upper bound for the kind of problem we need to solve.

The same is true for dealing with any other sealing failure. Assess what it looks like, taking the possibility of deception into account, then assume that it's the worst possible version of what it looks like that you can still defeat, and plan accordingly.

Remember the time we explored the Basement and came up with a thorough protocol for dealing with possible hazards, which saw two-thirds of the threats we faced coming, despite knowing almost nothing about what might be down there ahead of time? Same thing here. There's a lot you can do even with very limited intel.
 
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The problem is to write out the procedure to deal with the sealing failure in a clever and through manor would take 100 ish words of plan space and many hours of work in game. And that design isn't much better than sit it on fire and MEW it up
 
Oneiros said:
The problem is to write out the procedure to deal with the sealing failure in a clever and through manor would take 100 ish words of plan space and many hours of work in game. And that design isn't much better than sit it on fire and MEW it up
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Oh, I agree, "set it on fire and MEW the ashes up" is a perfectly reasonable first response to most non-esoteric sealing failures, second only to "skywalk upwards one kilometer, nuke it, and MEW the remains up". It'll probably work in this case, too. I'm just arguing against the idea that we were absolutely incapable of coming up with a more fine-tuned plan — that just because we had next to no information about our enemy, we couldn't have prepared for it.
 
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Noumero said:
I disagree.

Firstly, to address Sanderson's First Law: We aren't weaponizing a sealing failure, we are containing it: the magic isn't solving a problem in this context, the magic instigates it. If that wasn't allowed too, it'd essentially mean that stories about confronting the unknown are not allowed, which is obviously incorrect.

Sealing failures can do anything, but there are some statistical correlations that are known to us as well as to Hazou. For example, this rift is used as an invasion point by some kind of plant-like creature. While it's possible that the plant-like creature is an illusion cast by bladehorrors to mislead us, or not just a physical but a physical/memetic infestation that slowly corrupts all concepts it comes into contact with, or that it'll go away on its own if we leave it alone but if we hurt it too much its Elder God parent will come and smite this entire planet, or that it has an AoE assimilation field, or some other kind of esoteric nonsense, it isn't likely to be the case, compared to it simply being a plant-based monster.

To prepare for the worst-case scenario, we simply need to assume that it's the worst possible physical/plant monster permitted by known physics/biology that is still consistent with our survival up to this moment. Say it's intelligent, quantitatively superintelligent, capable of improving in response to damage, possessing a decentralized CNS, capable of detaching parts of itself which then become independent entities (capable of moving away from the rift & reproducing by assimilating EN's biology), capable of injecting people with a variety of substances whose effects vary from instant death to mind control, and capable of manifesting specialized tools for dealing with threats once it learned enough about them, including projectile weapons. This creates an upper bound for the kind of problem we need to solve.

The same is true for dealing with any other sealing failure. Assess what it looks like, taking the possibility of deception into account, then assume that it's the worst possible version of what it looks like that you can still defeat, and plan accordingly.

Remember the time we explored the Basement and came up with a thorough protocol for dealing with possible hazards, which saw two-thirds of the threats we faced coming, despite knowing almost nothing about what might be down there ahead of time? Same thing here. There's a lot you can do even with very limited intel.
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Don't forget the likely possibility that it spreads spores for various purposes, including:
  • Reproduction
  • Causing hallucinations in its targets
  • Poisoning its targets (requires that the poison be slow acting)
  • Parasitic reproduction inside its targets (requires it to take at least long enough to sprout that Hazō hasn't noticed any effects)
In order to account for these possibilities, I suggest that we burn a good 1-10 mile radius of the surrounding countryside, and have Noburi check us over for signs of poison/weird growths beforehand and afterwards.

We also may want to have Akane freeze the air above the plant when we first light it on fire, so that convection doesn't carry any spores upwards and out of the fires. The idea here is that the warm air coming up from the fire will be cooled down by the zone of EM, then be cool/dense enough to be unable to rise any higher because the air above it is warmer.

Edit:
There's a possibility that it drops seeds which sprout after a fire, like a lot of real life plants. Therefore, we should also give the general area an acid bath afterwards, and/or wait a bit and then light it on fire again.
 
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eaglejarl said:
@faflec Has there been a case where a summoned creature -- not the Summoner, the creature -- took something from the Human Path to the Seventh?
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Velorien said:
PSA: Important clarification about summoning message-passing

When a summon animal is brought to the Human Path, their real body is put in storage and a chakra construct is created for them on the Human Path. It's very much like a henge except the real body is not inside it.

The chakra-construct body will have all the gear that the original was carrying, except that chakra objects will not have chakra -- seals are not infused, etc. You have not attempted to infuse a seal blank created in this way, but Keiko suggests it's probably a bad idea.

Because there is no real body, a summon animal cannot bring stuff back from the Human Path to the Seventh Path. When the summon departs from the Human Path, their construct body and all the gear they brought with them vanish.

In order to pass messages to Jiraiya the following sequence is necessary:
A) Summon a messenger pangolin who is currently in the Toad Clan's embassy
B) Have the pangolin reverse-summon Keiko to the Summon Path
C) She gives Jiraiya's toad a message or message scroll
D) She unsummons herself
E) Eventually Jiraiya summons the toad in question
F) The toad passes Jiraiya the message
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eaglejarl said:
@faflec Has there been a case where a summoned creature -- not the Summoner, the creature -- took something from the Human Path to the Seventh?
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I'm going for the "Condors don't want to let give the Scroll to the pangolings, therefore they try to bring it back with them in the Summon Path after the Summoner got a acute case of Rasengan poisoning".
Oh, i forgot about the tradition, sorry.
I meant "Keiko and Naruto got killed, the Condor brought the Scroll back to the Summon path to reverse summon all the pangoling in the Out. We're all going to die"
 
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Chapter 339: Twilight
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    • All six people were once more seated on the cushions of the Oracle's inner sanctum, comfortably but for the edge of unease stemming from the knowledge that the kitchen, and Hidan's peppermint tea, were only a few steps away.

    Itachi flicked a seal through the air, instantly sucking in all the leftover incense smoke. While Hazō's brain copied the design, his conscious mind was arrested by an unfamiliar red scorpion symbol on the back of the sealing tag. Most sealmasters didn't bother signing their work, seals coming (ideally) in many copies, and the majority not being reusable.

    "Now," Itachi said, "let us dispense with the somewhat-extended pleasantries. As one last seen beating a giant snake to death with his bare hands and deploying mountain-levelling explosives to solve a problem measured in square metres, I must admit you make me recall happier days. However, you are also more responsible for Nagato's death than any man not wearing a hat. I assure you that the two do not balance out.

    "Still… you may speak. For a little while."

    "You mind if I start the killing, Itachi?" Hidan asked from the opposite end of the room with a hungry grin that had lasted him the entire day and still not started fading. "I know you said no bloodshed in the village, but…"

    Itachi sighed. "I believe we have already established this. I would prefer those three to be kept alive unless they violate their commitment not to interfere with our discussion. Or unless this young man speaks a lie or gives offence."

    He turned back to Hazō with a pleasant, neutral expression.

    "I believe you had a case to make."

    Hazō swallowed. "Sir, would you mind indulging me for just a minute before I move on to the main part? I know I must seem ignorant and arrogant to you right now, and to an extent I am—I'm only just a chūnin, and I am facing one of the most powerful people in the world—but if you could help me…"

    There was something about Itachi that reminded Hazō of Lord Shikaku. Interrogation that established a clear intellectual hierarchy. The luxury of playing back and forth with ideas even as the other person's ego was on the line. He'd never beaten Lord Shikaku in a contest of wits, in the office or (memorably) at the gaming table, but at least it had taught him a little about different ways to lose.

    "…if you could help me overcome the sin of ignorance, if only a little, I think I could be a lot more use to you in this discussion."

    Itachi gave a distant smile that quickly disappeared. "Hidan will inform you that the greatest sin is mercy, and the greatest virtue is conviction. Where, I wonder, does ignorance fall on that scale?"

    Was that approval, or at least tolerance? Conviction was pretty high up on the scale as far as Hazō was concerned—Uplift demanded nothing less—but if conviction was the power to get over the barrier, then ignorance was the barrier itself.

    "Could you tell me just a little about Akatsuki? Where do you come from? What brought you together? What does an organisation that calls itself Dawn seek to bring to the world?"

    "What indeed?" Itachi said. "We are, it may not have escaped your notice, a handful of relentless murderers and destroyers. Our collective death count, direct and indirect, eclipses that of certain governments and villages. You are not the first to ask about our purpose, though usually it is in tones of helpless incomprehension when a fading mind has nothing left but questions.

    "That remains an option here."

    "Can I kill them yet?" came a voice in the perfect intonation of a child demanding, "Are we there yet?" during a long cart journey.

    "Patience, Hidan. Your lord has already received enough souls today to cover an entire week. Why not do the next best thing and serve them some peppermint tea? While still ready to deal instant death, of course."

    "Yeah, and I'll keep breathing too, shall I?"

    Itachi turned his attention back to Hazō, something part of Hazō regretted.

    "Now consider what kind of man it must have taken to convince each one of us that peace was both desirable and within our reach."

    "And that was Nagato?"

    The light in Itachi's eyes grew brighter, and not in a good way.

    "An outsider like you has no right to speak that name. To the world, to those who knew him not as a man but only through his actions, he called himself Pain. He refused to forget, even for an instant, the price he was forcing them to pay for his ambitions."

    "What ambitions?" Hazō asked.

    "World peace," Itachi said softly. An end to"—he waved a hand vaguely in the air—"all this. An end to humanity as it saw itself. I doubt you would understand."

    Hazō didn't.

    "What does that mean?" he pressed. "How did he think humanity saw itself?"

    "Humanity," Itachi said, "is an entity that considers Akatsuki to be normal. We should all be up in arms, Nagato said, demanding how the world we know could have given birth to this abomination; how it is possible for so many madmen to have been allowed so much power at the same time, or at all; and what errors we made to bring this about, so that we can prevent it from ever happening again.

    "Instead, the streets echo with the same repeated words: 'Of course they murder people. They're missing-nin.' 'If they have that much power, why wouldn't they use it for themselves?' 'They're not like you and me; they're monsters you can't reason with.'

    "Nagato was a man who saw humanity with open eyes and did not choose to abandon it or destroy it. That alone tells you everything you need to know."

    Hazō didn't know what to say into the sombre silence Itachi's words left behind.

    Then, finally…

    "So what did he do?"

    "Everything," Itachi said. "His failures have shaped much of the world you know. And failures they were. Every single one. Humanity refused to change."

    Hazō wanted to ask more, to penetrate into mysteries of the world only Akatsuki could ever tell him, but Kagome-sensei had taught him better. People died if they learned the wrong mysteries. People got killed by the wrong mysteries. Ask no questions to which you might not be able to handle the answers.

    "Was that why he made the ritual?" he asked instead. It should be safe enough to ask something everyone knew about.

    "He made the ritual," Itachi said with unexpected ferocity, "because he refused to accept that humanity had signed its own death warrant. Because after we refused to let him save us, he decided that he hadn't given enough, and decided to give us all he had left. All his genius. All his power. All his compassion. And we killed him for it."

    Hazō didn't have any words. It didn't feel safe to speak anyway.

    "You will never understand what you cost the world when you were complicit in his death. No one ever will."

    Itachi fell silent for a while. Shadows flickered across his eyes, then finally faded.

    "Nagato forgave even those of Akatsuki. While he was a better man than I, perhaps I should at least give you a little longer."

    He glanced behind him, where three people sought to enjoy Hidan's hospitality, with teacups trembling in their hands as he watched them for the tiniest excuse to act.

    "I suppose that monologue was cathartic in its own way," Itachi said, relaxing, "but I should stop before I reach the realm of melodrama or Hidan will never let me hear the end of it.

    "Now it is your turn to lead the conversation."

    Itachi spoke just softly enough that his voice didn't reach Akane and the others.

    "Persuade me that you are worth listening to before those cups are dry."

    It was a test. A cruel test by a man who held all the cards. Was there the tiniest spark of amusement in Itachi's eyes? Was he really planning to execute four innocents (by shinobi standards, and Hazō must have been forgiven if he no longer had dreams about those flames over the water) based just on how fast Hazō could talk?

    Still, it was a test. Anyone who trusted that tests couldn't cause real injuries didn't make it through the Mist Academy.

    Hazō took a deep breath which would not be his last. He couldn't take his time, but if he rushed this, it wouldn't be compelling enough to catch the interest of an intelligent man who, if he had any interest in peace at all, might well have had these same thoughts a dozen times.

    "I explained the Gōketsu's overall stance before. The purpose of our existence as a clan is to advance humanity towards a better world, and a better world requires effective, original solutions, or others would have already done it."

    "That did not last long," Itachi commented. "Hidan—"

    "Wait!" Hazō exclaimed. "Please… let me have this one strike. I didn't know about Naga—Pain when I started talking to you, and I didn't update, and I did make Hidan happy earlier. One chance?"

    "Lord Jashin doesn't do saving up credit," Hidan said. "But then again, this chick here"—he waved his scythe in the general direction of Akane, coming ever so close to slitting her throat—"passed the Oracle's trial. Since that hasn't paid out yet, it'd leave a bad taste in my mouth if I killed her offhand. I'll just do the guys."

    "No," Itachi said firmly. "They are of one clan."

    "Tch."

    "I don't want to talk about the Gōketsu right now," Hazō pressed on urgently. "I want to talk about an idea I call the Accords. I think we all agree that violence between ninja and between ninja and civilians is one of the main sources of suffering in this world."

    Itachi gave him a "you don't say" look.

    "Suppose that violence was artificially limited," Hazō said. "Not removed; I'm not that much on an idealist."

    The look changed to one of steel-melting scepticism.

    "I must stress that these are preliminary ideas," Hazō said. Behind Itachi, Noburi sipped his tea, back ramrod straight instead of his familiar slouch. "They won't work without discussion, negotiation and refinement."

    Itachi nodded. "And so you bring them to us, not as a detailed proposal but as a pipe dream."

    "Everything has to start somewhere," Hazō said politely. The ideal scenario was for him to draw a subtle parallel between his own ambitions and Pain's, but without giving the tiniest implication that the two were remotely similar in any way, because that was certain to give offence. He'd learned that lesson well when he saw Tsunade nearly kill Keiko for implying that they had similar feelings about Jiraiya.

    "We need time. I honestly believe that it's possible to mitigate violence, in the long term, given enough time to build solid foundations. Maybe even change shinobi civilisation altogether—there is historical precedent." Hazō had to tread lightly. The Accords weren't that far off from what the First Hokage had originally envisioned, but any teenager who claimed to be the next Hashirama wasn't going to walk out that door.

    "You are implying," Itachi said, "that you can plan and lead a revolution in human thought and political behaviour on the scale of the First Hokage, whose power was born in a world that knew nothing but war, and forged in the crucible of rivalry with the greatest of my own ancestors. Is this going where I think it's going?"

    Unfortunately, it probably was.

    But Ami had given him the response to this one. A world that had never known anything but war would have no idea what to do with world peace even if it achieved it. Shinobi simply didn't know how to think that way.

    But if you turned that thought around, if you used the cynicism…

    "You're absolutely right," Hazō said. "The First had to make peace out of a world of eternal war, and many people, especially the strong, wouldn't even have wanted it, much less believed it was possible. It's a miracle he got as far as he did. I couldn't do that—I don't know if anyone since him could."

    "None of us shall ever know, now," Itachi said coldly.

    Hazō shivered.

    "We don't have to!" he exclaimed before Itachi could have time to explore that thought and its relevance to Hazō personally. "The First succeeded. He and Lord Uchiha did bring peace to a world of eternal war. We don't have to do that again. All we have to do is stand on the shoulders of giants. All we have to do is make people want the peace that he's already given them, and I think the Accords can buy us time to make that happen."

    "You have piqued my curiosity," Itachi admitted. "Hidan, would you kindly offer our guests a second helping of tea? Half the amount this time—we wouldn't want them to grow bored with the flavour."

    "Thank you, sir," Hazō said fervently, choosing not to dwell on the fact that Itachi could tell, while listening to Hazō, that three people some distance away had just finished drinking their tea in tense silence.

    "The Accords would be an international agreement," Hazō said, "signed by all major villages, to limit warfare to certain acceptable limits that we can agree on through negotiations. If any defects from the agreement, the other signatories commit to declare war on them. It's a simple but effective deterrent."

    "A number of trivially obvious questions rival each other over order of expression," Itachi commented coolly. "Let us set aside for the moment the question of the economic benefits of such a pseudo-alliance, and what a world of war would use them for if not to fuel more war. Why would the villages commit their military power to enforce it? The present status quo is stable, if only because at present Rock's incompetence nearly balances out Leaf's. To disrupt their equilibrium is a complex and dangerous feat. You came here from a Leaf tottering on the edge of annihilation, preserved only by Rock's inability to press their advantage, all because you committed more forces to the Battle of Delusions than your allies. And yet you invite each of the villages to risk becoming the next Leaf.

    "Do not take me for a fool. There is a reason you chose to bring this idea to us first, without, I note, the Hokage's seal of approval. You want Akatsuki's cooperation. No, you believe it to be a precondition before you so much as begin discussing the matter with your superiors.

    "We do not serve as enforcers. Do not believe the idea original to you. A world peace enforced by Akatsuki, by a handful of relentless murderers and destroyers who only recently killed the greatest and most revered men in the world seemingly without provocation, would be a peace founded on hatred and fuelled by hatred. We would be seen as tyrants even if we never gave a single order, nor spoke a single word of policy. It would be the world Senju Hashirama feared most.

    "You are not here to seek our guidance on crafting peace," Itachi said ironically. "No one would commit that folly. Nor will we lend you our arms for war. I see no further path for this conversation."

    "That's not why I'm—"

    Lies are death.

    "Like I said," Hazō replied, "these are just preliminary ideas. You don't have to agree to anything. I'm just asking you to hear me out, and hoping you'll have some suggestions for improvement, or at least find room for discussion."

    "I think not," Itachi said. "I grant the nobility of your motivations, but we have long since rejected the idea of using war, or the threat of war, to bring about peace. There is a reason we, who could defeat the villages in detail and achieve absolute rule within weeks at most, confined ourselves to minor acts of devastation. There was no room for ambiguity in Nagato's words, nor did I feel the need for any."

    "But what else is there?" Hazō exclaimed. "Either you trust people to achieve peace through reason and common sense—"

    Itachi gave a brief, bitter laugh.

    "—or you impose it on them from outside. The Accords do both. That's why I think they can succeed where everything else has failed."

    "Or they will fail in both," Itachi replied. "The first defection—and it is naïve to the point of insanity to think that there will never be a single defection for any reason—will result in a convergence of destruction that will free itself from the shackles of mercy and utterly destroy the defecting village. Unless you are optimistic enough to believe that four forces, with their ancient enemy utterly helpless before them, will smile and quietly retreat after an arbitrary amount of damage has been dealt? I assure you, the impossible fortune of Leaf's almost-fall will not repeat itself.

    "With four villages remaining—plus whatever minors have urgently flocked to the banner—you have now attained rule through fear. Reap the benefits of the Accords; be cooperative and friendly. Assent to the decisions of the majority, for it is they who decide whether you are following the rules.

    "Even after he saw the consequences of a demigod's extremism first-hand, Nagato did not propose a tyranny of the masses."

    Itachi rose from his seat.

    "A pity," he muttered. "For a moment, I almost thought…"

    He shook the thought away.

    "On consideration, I believe it would be best for someone to report your clandestine activities, and their outcomes, to the Hokage."

    He stepped back so as to be able to see the entirety of the room.

    "In deference to your courage, I will allow you to choose which one."

    -o-
    ​
    You have received 1 + 1 = 2 XP.

    -o-
    ​
    The rifts are... well... let's just say that none of the islanders intend to go investigate what happened for quite a while.

    -o-​

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on Saturday 25th of April, 9 a.m. New York Time.
     
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