Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
- Location
- Europe
Noburi knows at least about the resurrection part:
And the original plan had us check with Mari and Keiko! No OPSEC failure should be possible!!
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nope we have shared it with Mari, Kagome and Noburi
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
That never really happened, though.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
The quoted scene from earlier actually implies that we've told Keiko and Akane as well. So everyone on Team Uplift should know, at least.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
I don't think that ever happened on-screen; I think the only evidence that it happened at all (off-screen, by process of elimination) is Noburi's comment as quoted by @ContextBot.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
A lot of wind got taken out of its sails by WoQM pretty much saying it's unlikely to be anywhere near simple enough for my proposal to get clear results. Things like 'the phase of the moon might affect specific capacity' or 'chakra control as a modifier on how much a technique costs is likely a factor in-universe'.
There's still merit to gathering as much data as we can, but it's going to be a lot of data over a sizeable timeframe, during which we're essentially asking people to drain a full chakra pool regularly for science. The expected scope of the endeavor has expanded considerably.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If nothing else, we can have it running as a background thing where we fully expect it to turn into something useful a few generations from now. Begin research on it, set parameters, throw money at it, and forget about it.
Chapter 351: Best Left Unspoken
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Before the timeskip, deep in the forest...
Minute after minute, Hazō heard nothing but the sound of moving paper, and occasional gasps. Only Yuno had finished her copy of the Nagi Island report, and was now staring fixedly into the distance as if trying to bend reality to her will with sheer grit until it reached a shape she could understand. Hers, of course, was quite a lot shorter than everyone else's—Mari had persuaded Asuma that, since Pain's final speech alluded to events long in the past, having access to the perspective of a culture holding centuries of lost lore could be incredibly valuable, but that didn't mean he was willing to grant a foreigner the full spread of information only clan heads had originally been cleared for. Strictly speaking, even the extent to which Hazō was allowed to share the document in its entirety with the chūnin and genin in the clan was questionable, but Asuma was a reasonable man and the people in this room were as close as the Gōketsu would ever get to a council of clan elders.
In respect of Mari's veto, the conversation wasn't going to take place underground, but the Master of the MEW could create a secure discussion space with a finger snap and a handful of seals. It had, of course, promptly started to rain, but with a judicious application of Air Domes, this only resulted in the pleasant experience of watching the rain stream overhead as he waited for his family to finish reading (if he ever lost his position as clan head, he could find a job as secretary anywhere with the Iron Nerve's document-copying skills).
"Holy shit," Noburi concluded. "This is heavy stuff. Somebody needs to give that jōnin a medal."
"Yeah."
"So what does this have to do with our future plans?" Mari asked. "Because if you're suggesting we take over where Akatsuki left off…"
Hazō rolled his eyes. "That is not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting we think about what nearly happened there, and what it means. Not for the Gōketsu. For everyone.
"All this time, we've been out to change the way people think, and how they behave towards each other. We've been tackling systems that don't work, or systems that are downright destructive to the people who take part in them, and looking for ways to either fix them or tear them down and put something new in their place. That's Uplift. That's us. It's the right thing to do, and we're the only ones doing it, and for those reasons, we're never going to stop, not until it's done. It has to be our main priority.
"But I'm starting to think there's a bigger picture, and if we let ourselves ignore it, then sooner or later, some out-of-context disaster is going to hit us, and we won't have any idea what we're dealing with. That bigger picture is what I want to talk about today."
"You are referring to the scope of the Akatsuki ritual," Keiko said thoughtfully. "Had they succeeded in their activities on some distant mountaintop of some minor island, it would have rendered everything we have done irrelevant, and had it not been for the sterling work of various spies and spymasters, we would not have so much as known about it until it was too late."
"Boy, you have no idea," Noburi said. "Remember when I was out with Captain Kakashi baking cookies? I've got a strong suspicion that if that mission had failed—and it might very well have done if the morons hadn't ambushed the Gōketsu Noburi over open water—we'd have spent our final hours thinking of Nagi Island as a pleasant, if dull, holiday spot."
"Right," Hazō said. "But in a way, that apocalyptic disaster is just a symptom of the bigger problem with this world. And that problem in a nutshell is this: reality is fragile."
He paused to let this soak in.
"I don't think everyone appreciates just how true that is. Every sealing failure is, in some way or other, a tear in reality, when the fundamental laws that shape our existence just aren't strong enough to resist the damage from something as humble as a piece of paper with some chakra-infused ink on it. I'm no expert on summoning, but I once had a conversation with Keiko which makes me think it's not just sealmasters who worry about this kind of thing, either."
"You can say that again," Noburi muttered. "I'm already having nightmares, and I haven't even summoned anything yet."
"Persevere," Keiko advised. "They fade once you finally resign yourself to the inevitable."
"Gee, thanks, big sis."
Keiko fell silent at the appellation, and Hazō pressed on.
"I know the Akatsuki ritual is an anomaly. As far as we know, there's never before been an effect powerful enough to just reshape all of reality, and thank the Sage and all his many brothers for that small mercy."
In his corner of the makeshift room, Kagome-sensei sighed, but didn't say anything.
"That doesn't mean we'll always be so lucky. Reality is fragile. I've seen sealing failures tear open rifts to unknown places more than once. We don't know how long a rift will last. We don't know what will come through. You all remember the scissor monsters?"
Haru and Yuno gave each other commiserating looks.
"It's just what it sounds like," Hazō said briskly. "It's sealed up now. But the point is, those were creatures we could handle. Without too much difficulty, even. But suppose it had been an S-rank monster, the Orochimaru of its homeworld? Or an alien plague to which no human is immune? Or something which only needs to glimpse our world once before it can open its own rifts to it?
"What protects us from total annihilation isn't a wall," Hazō said. "It's a veil. Beyond that veil, Outside reality, are beings literally unlike anything we can imagine, because our imaginations are built according to principles that do not apply to them. Their power is not limited by the laws of our reality, and they have no reason to value our lives. We exist only because none of them are interested in lifting the veil of their own accord.
"It's terrifying. It should be. The system within which we exist is critically flawed, and we and everyone and everything we love is under constant threat of destruction for reasons that aren't fair and make no sense. It's so terrifying that most people, when they grasp the full wrongness of it, close their eyes and look away, and tell themselves that everything is as it should be, because the alternative is a sense of helplessness that gives birth to total despair."
He stood, in silence, watching the darkness slowly fill the room.
"So what else is new?" he demanded.
"What did we do the first time we saw that we were living in a deadly, broken system? We refused to look away. We faced every last crack running through shinobi civilisation, every last point of weakness where the world we knew was in the process of falling apart. Then, we swore to change it. And we didn't let the fact that it looked impossible stop us, or even slow us down."
"Hazō," Mari said, "there's a difference between stopping people from acting like idiots and changing the way the universe itself works." Her tone was sceptical, nearly dismissive, but her expression was that of a woman waiting to be convinced.
"Not to a sealmaster," Hazō said lightly. "It's just a matter of which seals you apply."
Kagome-sensei smirked approvingly.
"I'm not saying it's easy," Hazō said more soberly. "Frankly, right now it's way above our pay grade. But we're not powerless. The closer we get to true Uplift, the more time, and resources, and motivation humanity will have for solving its real problems instead of perpetuating murder and oppression. Until then, we can still gather information, and make plans, and look for points of influence where even a small action can make a big difference. All it takes to revolutionise warfare is sticking an ordinary seal to a pair of sandals. Maybe there's only so much we can do right now, but given what's at stake… I think our only choice is to revolutionise the world."
Haru sighed wearily. Akane patted him on the shoulder.
"And so," Keiko said, "this bullet point list of talking points you have prepared for us. To be honest, after a trademark Hazō inspirational speech, it feels a little anticlimactic."
"I will take any amount of practical discussion to take my mind off just how incredibly doomed we are," Noburi said pointedly.
"Fair."
"First things first," Hazō said. "The reason Pain could do what he did was that he had a unique Bloodline Limit. I think Itachi called it the Rinnegan. Unfortunately, since Pain didn't do any actual fighting, we don't have a list of abilities for it, with the exception of those summons which had the same eyes. Noburi, you were studying with Dr Yakushi before you started summoning training. Have you ever heard of transplanting Bloodline Limits into summons? No, wait, that wouldn't even work. Their eyes are different sizes, and where would he get that many eyeballs, anyway?"
"You can't transplant eyeballs that way," Noburi said. "People have tried. There was that one thing with Captain Kakashi, but Tsunade's never done it again. Cracking that process was one of Dr Yakushi's big projects, but it's hard to experiment without actual Bloodline Limit holders to dissect. Obviously, Captain Kakashi wasn't exactly keen to go under the scalpel."
"The Crows are said to have surgeons far superior to any on the Human Path," Keiko noted. "Given that they are Itachi's summons, it is not inconceivable that they were responsible. Regardless, this is a dead end. I see no way for us to know, short of an interview with Akatsuki, what Pain's powers were and how they were applied to the ritual."
"Fine," Hazō said reluctantly. "Next topic?"
"Once our hearts are united," Akane read out, "war will not merely cease. The very idea will become laughable. We will look back on this dark age with the horror it deserves."
There was a contemplative silence. They were such strange words to hear from the man behind all of the slaughter and all of the suffering. It would have been so much easier if Pain had just been a more intelligent Hidan.
"I wish I could have talked to him," Hazō said suddenly. "Before all this. Not that I can forgive his methods, but I wish I could have talked to another person who… got it."
Akane nodded. "Honestly, this sounds like the Will of Fire. The Will of Fire unites people's hearts. If everyone follows it properly, there isn't supposed to be any conflict. Not between clans, not between ninja and civilians… There wouldn't even be conflict with other villages if we were all united by the Will of Fire."
"You people do still remember that this was the bloodthirsty monster who had half the world's ninja massacred for the sake of his plan, right?" Haru asked bitingly. "Akatsuki are evil. They do not deserve sympathy."
"It's possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons," Hazō countered, maybe more vehemently than he intended. "Read this transcript. Doesn't it tell you something that his biggest opponent, ideology-wise, was Hyūga Hiashi?"
Haru looked down at the transcript uncertainly.
"Forget it," Hazō snapped. "Let's move on. Does anyone have any clue about this part? 'Because ever since the Sage's failure, we've been living in a broken world. Because after a thousand years of sacrifice, the Five are still sealed, and I was born with the power to subjugate the Nine.'"
"Well," Noburi said slowly, "the Nine are obviously the Tailed Beasts. I don't know what the power to subjugate them literally means, but we can at least add that to the list of Rinnegan abilities. The Five, though? It's a number with a lot of associations."
"Five elements, five villages, five nations…" Mari said.
"Not villages," Hazō said. "If they've been sealed for a thousand years, they predate the village system by a long way. Actually, I'm not sure if 'five elements' is useful either. Some theories say that Shadow, as in Shadow Clones, is a sixth element, and for all I know there are others we aren't cleared to know about."
"Five clans?" Mari said. "Mori, Nara, Tama, Raiyoke… Raiyoke…"
"Yodomi," Yuno finished. "The Five Forbidden Clans." She tilted her head slightly sideways, as if thinking, while everyone else looked at her in surprise.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I get it. What if the Five are se—"
"Gasai Yuno."
Keiko's voice was completely flat.
"Go directly to the Nara compound and request to be placed in confinement. This is an order from the Pangolin Summoner."
Yuno stood up reflexively. She looked uncertainly at the rest of the group, who were busy staring at Keiko.
Keiko rose to face her. Her expression was chilling. "Yuno, you have no legal status in Leaf. Per the clan secrecy laws, I am entitled to execute you on the spot. Go."
Quietly, almost under her breath, she added, "please."
"Y-Yes, Summoner," Yuno stuttered.
She bowed, picked up Satsuko, and walked unsteadily away into the rain.
"Keiko?" Noburi asked uncertainly a few seconds later.
"Insofar as the Five are, according to Pain, still sealed," Keiko said coolly, "they are not an existential threat to be addressed, and therefore not germane to this discussion. Shall we proceed to the next item on the agenda?"
The remaining members of the group exchanged glances.
"What are you going to do with Yuno?" Noburi asked tentatively.
"I will endeavour to ensure her survival," Keiko said, "but ultimately the decision is not in my hands."
"Keiko," Hazō said firmly, "I think we need to talk about this properly. What is going on?"
"Once we are finished here, I will return to the Nara compound and speak with both Shikamaru and Yuno to determine an appropriate course of action. Needless to say, I bear her no ill will, and I regret violating whatever law of hospitality I have doubtless violated, but ultimately, her own thoughtlessness has narrowed my options."
"Keiko," Hazō repeated.
"Must I spell it out for you?" Keiko exclaimed in sudden frustration. "Can you not use your reality-saving intellect to make the most basic inferences necessary to comprehend the situation? Am I the only person here who can gauge consequences before speaking?
"I have changed my mind," she said after a second of glaring at him. "Please continue this discussion without me." And then she stormed out, into the pouring rain, looking as if she was going to kill someone.
Hopefully it wouldn't be Yuno.
-o-
In XP terms, this is part of the previous update.
-o-
What do you do?
Voting closes on Saturday 20th of June, 9 a.m. New York Time
- Location
- NY
Was Pain trying to pull the Human Instrumentality Project?
- Location
- Yes.
Pain was trying to kill everyone else, then puppet their bodies like how he did in canon.
- Location
- France
You know, until Yuno revealed she knew something about the Five, I thought that this was a massive OpSec breach (IIRC the secret to Skywalkers isn't general knowledge, right? It's classified information in every village, but it's still classified information). But she's going to die anyway because of a far more significant OpSec breach (which, you know, could lead to the slaughter of her entire village if things go badly offscreen), so whatever!
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Motherfucker. Just... shit.
- Location
- Europe
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
What's more interesting to me than 'The Five Forbidden Clans' is the fact that Keiko knew about that term, even as a Mori Genin. I've seen from previous cases that Keiko does hold the keeping of Mori clan secrets as imperative even despite being separated from the Mori, so it's not surprising that she wouldn't have told us, but what else did she learn as a Genin?
Anyways, I see two things we could try and do here.
Anyways, I see two things we could try and do here.
- End the meeting and go try to affect the Keiko/Yuno thing somehow. Maybe if Yuno quickly marries Noburi that changes something?
- Accept that there's nothing we can reasonably to that won't make things worse, and instead continue the meeting.
- Location
- NY
Iunno, that kinda reads like what SEELE said about Human Instrumentality...
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well, Yuno let slip a Very Big Secret, right? Involving the "advisory" clans? (I'm assuming that they're forbidden from using fuuinjutsu because of the way their bloodline interacts with the Out?) Anyhow, if it's Yuno's transgression was spilling beans to non-Forbidden Clan Members, then we can suggest to Noburi that he propose to Yuno in earnest.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Keep in mind she seemed to not know certain things before Shikamaru debriefed her after the wedding.
- Location
- Europe
Shikamaru told her, she didn't know anything before:
I don't know why this was worth it? We already suspected about the five clans to some degree?