Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
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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
- Kiev, Ukraine
Orochimaru. The man that lessens collateral... Ironic
Chapter 437: Courting Disaster
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"A bold proposal," Keiko said in the voice of Kani-sensei preparing to send Hazō to the headmaster's office for suggesting improvements to her tried-and-tested lesson plan. "Yoshida was wise not to present it to Snowflake's face."
Hazō shifted uncomfortably in his war seat. It had been a warm morning in Dog territory until Keiko walked down into the cave, but now he was wishing he'd brought several extra blankets, and maybe a mug of hot chocolate. At a guess, things weren't going any better with Mari.
No, wait. Of course he had a mug of hot chocolate, capped with a reinforced lid to withstand extradimensional pressures and safely squirrelled away in a storage seal. Keiko herself was the one who'd tipped him off that Ino liked to drown stress in apocalyptic amounts of sugar, and ever since then, his emergency survival kit had included at least one mug for when he accidentally offended his tempestuous new girlfriend. He had yet to determine whether she genuinely appreciated it as an adjunct to her post-apology cooldown or whether she was secretly running a social experiment on him (and if so, whether Keiko was in on it). He also wasn't sure why he'd brought his emergency survival kit to the Seventh Path to see Keiko, who was not so easily placated, but the impulse decision was paying off.
"Keiko, do you mind if I have a drink?"
Keiko beckoned for him to continue, seemingly unsurprised.
"The first condition," she said, "is naturally the Hokage's concern rather than ours, though I daresay he will have a difficult time demonstrating good faith if he refuses to acknowledge Isan's very sovereignty. We may dismiss it from consideration.
"The second is a commitment I have already made to Takahashi-sensei, notably in almost those exact words. I am beginning to feel as if there is a rich tapestry of history shared by those two to which we will never be made privy.
"The fourth, if I may skip ahead, is of course for Kagome to decide. How did he respond, incidentally, to Yoshida's act of courtship?"
Hazō: Empathy 9 - 3 = 6 vs TN ??
Fail.
Hazō: Physique 9 + 0 - 1 = 8 vs TN ??
Fail.
Keiko: Alertness 31 - 3 = 28 vs TN ??
Pass.
Fail.
Hazō: Physique 9 + 0 - 1 = 8 vs TN ??
Fail.
Keiko: Alertness 31 - 3 = 28 vs TN ??
Pass.
Hazō spat out his drink.
Keiko smoothly stepped to the side, which was just as well, since if the temperature was an accurate reflection of her mood, soiling her white blouse would not have ended well for him.
"Her what?!"
"She sent him a complex puzzle," Keiko explained as if it should have been obvious, "on the understanding that his successful solving of same would serve as the foundation of a relationship between them. It is an act of flirtation at the very least, and the way in which it is tailored ideally to his interests speaks well of her romantic acumen."
Hazō stared. "Keiko, even Mari wouldn't read that much into the fact that she put a confidentiality seal on her letter."
Keiko's expression turned several degrees colder at the mention of Mari. Hazō winced on the inside.
"This type of courtship is standard among the Mori," she said curtly. "The nature of the act conveys respect for the receiving party's intellect, while skilful craftsmanship of the puzzle is a demonstration of one's own. Since the Frozen Skein is an inherent obstacle to such creative acts, the effort involved also speaks for itself. Furthermore, choosing a puzzle of a suitable type, and correctly calibrating its difficulty level, is proof of attention paid to the receiving party's interests and the workings of their mind. Needless to say, a Mori caught offering the same puzzle to multiple seduction targets would soon be mocked as incompetent as well as inconstant.
"Conversely, the manner in which the receiving party ultimately presents their solution, such as an elaborate mathematical proof or a few carefully-chosen quotes from an ancient scholar, is a means of responding to the giver's feelings that is both clear and capable of endless subtlety. Likewise, the response that one presently lacks time and/or cognitive resources for Mori-style romance is much more plausible and elegant than the quintessential 'I am washing my hair', while carrying the same subtext.
"Ami, being possessed of endless intelligence, beauty, and charm, used to be showered with such puzzles, and has by now refined the art of solving them in an instrumental fashion to extraordinary heights. I myself—no, never mind.
"All in all, it is a vastly more interesting and transparent process than the miscommunication-ridden chaotic mess that the world at large calls flirting. I admit that Yoshida has risen in my estimation based on her deft handling of same—though, of course, she then plunges back into the bottomless depths for contaminating a delicate diplomatic negotiation with her personal romantic concerns."
The frightening thing was that given Hazō's unreliable knowledge of both Isanese culture and, notoriously, the flirting thing, he honestly could not say whether she was right or wrong. It also alarmed him enormously that he caught part of his mind updating a difficulty assessment for trying to date Ami (which now stood at a Trauma Number of 60: Fantastic).
"I think," he decided after a few seconds' thought, "that Kagome-sensei is an adult man and his love life is none of my business."
Keiko nodded sagely. "A fine and traditional reformulation of 'I am not touching that mess with a ten-foot pole'. It is my intention to do likewise, and not only because, given recent trends, it risks me somehow finding myself in a polycule with an arbitrary number of Isanese clan heads. Hazō, when did our love lives become so complicated?"
"Well," Hazō said, "in my case it was when Akane and I agreed to date Ino after one or more honest conversations about our desires and concerns. In yours, I think it was when Jiraiya forced you into an arranged marriage, not realising that you were secretly in a taboo relationship with another girl, or that Shikamaru's personal assistant was also his lover or your lover or both. Though now I think of it, maybe he did it deliberately because it sounds exactly like a plot for one of his books."
Keiko sighed. "Hazō, Shiori is not in any way romantically involved with me. She is infatuated with Shikamaru, who acknowledges her feelings but has yet to offer a definitive response. It is my personal belief that he will continue evading the issue for as long as possible due to his own romantic incompetence, not that I have any better solution to offer him. With regard to myself, I admit confusion as to her feelings. She is simultaneously hostile and tolerant, resentful and supportive, and while she claims she finds me endlessly frustrating and a symptom of everything that is wrong with the world, this does not prevent her from regularly seeking me out, usually for the purposes of competition in board games or taijutsu. Regardless, I can at least dismiss her from consideration where my love life is concerned."
Keiko was offering personal information of her own will. Praise the Sage and all his many brothers. Had Hazō gone up a clearance level in Keiko's internal OPSEC ranking, or did he dare take this as a sign that she was becoming less homicidal in regard to her privacy?
Well, he was on a roll. He might as well see how far he could go with this.
"What about Snowflake? What's her place in all this?"
"Complicated," Keiko said. "Tenten has acknowledged her as a second girlfriend. In her mind, the metaphysical differences between us make Snowflake something like a person I could become, or a person I could have become. Both are well within her heart's ability to encompass, Tenten being the avatar of unconditional love and support that she is. Of course, it helps that our unique situation also sidesteps many of the complications of polyamory, though I am not such an optimist as to believe I will be able to escape those forever."
"Does that make you two girlfriends as well?" Hazō dared to ask.
Keiko's eyes narrowed dangerously. Hazō wished reverse summoning was literal reverse summoning, because he could really do with being immortal on the Seventh Path right now.
Keiko raised her hand, beginning lethal ninjutsu. Hazō prepared to dodge, aware that in his current state he'd be hard-pressed to avoid a particularly lazy bumblebee.
No, wait. She was making a Nara hand sign. She held her left hand in a diagonal perpendicular to her body, fingers pointing up.
"I don't know that one."
"Your question cannot be meaningfully answered because it is predicated on false assumptions that render it incoherent."
"What false assumptions are those?" Hazō asked cautiously.
"Snowflake and I cannot be girlfriends in any conventional sense any more than we can be sisters in any conventional sense, or rivals, or parent and child, or any human relationship that assumes a clear border between self and other.
"You, with your mind-reader girlfriend, have but begun the journey to these heights of romantic complexity that challenge the definition of identity itself," Keiko added. "That said, your relationship with the Arachnid Empress indicates that you may yet surpass me in other respects. Snowflake's questionable biological status aside, I do at least intend to confine my love life to fellow human beings."
"For the last time, it's not like that! We're just using each other as part of a mutually-beneficial arrangement!"
"I do not judge, Hazō," Keiko said serenely. "I am given to understand that many a young man on a journey to distant lands for the first time may acquire a taste for the exotic. And, purely objectively speaking, you would be a valuable catch for any bored ruler seeking to expand their harem. I advise you to be cautious, however, lest you be targeted by those fearing that the empress's children with a concubine may complicate the succession."
"Consort, not concubine," Hazō corrected her instinctively.
A brief pause to replay the sentence.
"I mean, no, we are not having children!"
Keiko shook her head sadly. "I wish that were possible, Hazō, with all my heart. However, for as long as you are consort to the head of the clan, such duties can be delayed but not escaped. Take comfort in the fact that, as a male, you will at least avoid the horrors of pregnancy. Or perhaps you will not. My knowledge of Arachnid Clan reproductive processes is nil, and I will thank you to keep it that way."
Hazō's imagination conjured scenes bloodcurdling enough to make him review the notion of marrying anybody anywhere ever. He seriously considered the idea of having Ino selectively erase his memory of this conversation, even with the expectation of collateral damage.
Then, belated realisation dawned.
"Wait, you're doing this deliberately, aren't you?"
"Whatever gave you that idea?" Keiko asked innocently. "That you are the lawfully-wedded husband of the largest female arachnid you could find is plain fact, and my extrapolations from it are based on your own testimony and infallible logical reasoning. If you are in any doubt, we can consult Ami, whose Mori jōnin mastery of charts, diagrams, and yes, lists far transcends my paltry powers of verbal communication.
"Oh, no," Hazō said quickly. "We are not consulting Ami about this. She would have a field day." Worse, she might decide to join in, because she was exactly the kind of person who'd find dating a giant spider by proxy hilarious, and then his love life really would rival Keiko's. "No, instead we are going to pretend that entire conversation never happened and move on to the third item on Yoshida's list of conditions. Keiko, what are your thoughts?"
Keiko gave him an amused eye roll, but conceded to his
"It is, of course, the linchpin of the agreement," she said. "The other conditions are either reasonable or insane in a way that is compatible with the insanity of our daily lives. Here, however, Yoshida demands extensive subordination of my agency for an indefinite time period in exchange for a single, conditional, act of assistance that benefits her clan as much as it does us. Needless to say, this is not acceptable."
"So what do you want to do?" Hazō asked. "Renegotiate? If we just turn her down, I'm worried Yoshida might decide to cut her losses and sell us out to the High Priest in exchange for more power within the existing regime. The Ami Manoeuvre will go down like a lead shark if he realises he needs to take us out now, before we're ready to challenge him."
"True," Keiko conceded. "Ami has never denied that, in laying the groundwork for the AMI, she was ever a misstep away from annihilation at Yagura's hands, his existing plans for her future notwithstanding. This is why she was careful to make preparations that in no way undermined his present power, but rather anticipated his eventual defeat at some other hand, and thus did not appear subversive at a glance. While she doubts that the Hokage could have been as ruthless had he foreseen the KEI, given her status as a Mist jōnin—Jiraiya had already expended Leaf's one strike against a senior Mist shinobi sent as a gesture of trust—she can comfortably envision being summoned to his office and having him draw a hard line of permissible behaviour, with T&I waiting eagerly on the other side. That he did not do so in the aftermath suggests a deeper game, which thrills her to no end.
"Were I to choose, I would locate Azai in the former position. He would not hesitate to eliminate us were the perceived alternative to be cast down and potentially imprisoned or executed by his replacement. Certainly, it would not be without cost, for the tug of war between our ploys to gain popularity and his ploys to discredit us is ongoing, and the Pangolin Summoner remains in many people's hearts. But he did not claim his throne by being timid.
"Yoshida has effortlessly placed us between the rocks and the whirlpool. I must confess that it is beyond me, offhand…"
Her eyes lit up. "No, no it is not. Shadow Clone Technique!"
To Hazō's puzzlement, Snowflake turned slightly pink upon recognising his presence.
"G-Good evening, Hazō."
"Hi, Snowflake. It's good to see you. Do you have any thoughts on how to out-manipulate Yoshida?"
Snowflake considered, avoiding his gaze.
"It is obvious when you consider the full range of resources at our disposal," she said, turning towards Keiko. "We are, after all, not merely the co-leaders of the Isan team, nor merely the Gōketsu, compelled by instinct to pursue bold, explosive moves even at unreasonable risk."
"I have never felt such a compulsion," Keiko objected.
"My mistake," Snowflake said snidely. "It must have been some other Pangolin Summoner who dramatically declared her unilateral decision to terminate trade with the Pangolin Clan at a family dinner before every person with the power to influence her fate."
"You were implying that we had overlooked essential resources," Keiko replied. "What are these?"
"I propose that we accede to Yoshida's demands in full," Snowflake stated, waiting for their reactions because apparently a flair for drama was a trait shared by the sisters/girlfriends/rivals/parent and child.
"Continue," Keiko said in a tone more neutral than anything she used when she was actually unfazed.
"As an additional show of good faith, we will draw on the Nara's knowledge of contract law and, together with Shikamaru, provide an exact, scrupulously-calculated definition of what Yoshida's demands mean in practice within Leaf's idiosyncratic environment. Should she then wish to debate the details with Leaf's quibbler clan, we will of course oblige her. And if, after the Leaf-Isan alliance is signed, she should expect from us one iota of deviation from the terms we have committed to, why, she would be the one violating the compact she herself drew up."
Keiko gave the most evil of smiles, and suddenly Hazō was very glad that the "decide what to do about my brother infringing on my privacy" part of the evening was over.
"Yes. Oh, yes."
In her sparkling eyes, Hazō could see the Yoshida Clan's screaming souls being steadily ground into dust by the remorseless engine of bureaucracy. If he could only show this vision to the Dragons, he knew they'd flee back into their prison dimension just to be as far away from Keiko as possible.
"Now, if you will excuse me…"
At a nod from Keiko, the girl who hungered for every moment of existence swiftly dispelled herself.
"Is she all right, Keiko?" Hazō asked.
"If you cannot infer the nature of her behaviour, it is certainly not my place to elucidate it for her," Keiko said. "How she handles the consequences of her incompetence at communication will provide yet another valuable opportunity for self-definition."
"You two have a weird relationship, you know that?"
"Hazō, I have never known anything else. My most normal relationships are with Naruto, with whom I share a bond rooted in the complex interactions between our senses of identity and the Shadow Clone Technique, Ino, my husband's sister-in-spirit and lately my brother's girlfriend, who treats me like a favourite toy, and Kagome, with whom I have always had an unspoken pact of limited contact lest we, socially-oblivious and volatile beings both, trip each other's wires to cataclysmic effect."
"What about your relationship with me?" Hazō asked.
"Do not get me started," Keiko said with amusement, but also finality.
"All right," Hazō said after a second to take that in. "Let's get back to the much more straightforward topic of undermining the political status quo in a hostile alien environment. What's our endgame in Isan, Keiko? I'm entirely on board with removing the High Priest, if that hasn't been made clear, but I'm not sure how far we should be willing to go? A little far? Moderately far? Just far enough?"
"If you are angling for the obvious joke, Hazō," Keiko replied coolly, "I do not intend to oblige you. My memories of that incident are hardly my fondest.
"Azai Shūsuke stole the freedom that the people of Isan were owed after centuries of serving a hopeless cause in the name of an unworthy religion. He denied them their right to self-determination and amplified the worst traits of Isan's culture to his own ends. I will not weep if his story ends in the depths of the Traitor's Crevice, or with the two halves of his body on different sides of the same pangolin. Nor is it for me to complain should Isan's new rulers see fit to retain him as an advisor—that I am willing to end his life does not mean it is my property. However, I will see him removed from power. Let the Isanese make their own mistakes in this new world if they must, so long as they are theirs and not his."
"Cold-blooded murder not mandatory, but also not off the books," Hazō concluded. "I can work with that."
"I did not say it needed to be cold-blooded," Keiko noted. "Would it not make a lovely, if belated, wedding gift were we to grant Yuno and Satsuko unrestricted access to Azai's spine and internal organs?"
Hazō had fought and bled over the past two years to build a family in which it was entirely natural for his sister to offer this kind of wedding gift, and entirely plausible for his sister-in-law to receive it with joy. Even as it remained a race between completing Uplift and being driven insane by his loved ones, he wouldn't trade it for anything else.
-o-
"Good morning, Kagome-sensei."
"What?!" Kagome-sensei jumped up from his work desk, simultaneously brushing some papers out of sight in a way that only led them to spill all over the floor. "I wasn't doing anything!"
"I'm sure you weren't, Kagome-sensei," Hazō said placatingly, glimpsing the words 'interregnal unification' at the top of a sheet of paper before Kagome-sensei snatched the lot away and urgently stuffed them in a drawer. "Since you weren't doing anything, do you have a minute to give me some advice?"
"What? Advice? Sure, I can give advice. Free as a butterfly, me. Well, maybe not a butterfly. Those things are awful."
"They are?" Hazō asked.
Kagome-sensei nodded firmly. "Bane of all sealmasters, the chaos butterfly. You ever see one, you drop your seals and run."
"Got it," Hazō said, equally firmly. "What does one look like?"
"No idea," Kagome-sensei said. "They don't leave survivors. Now, you wanted advice?"
"Uh… yes. It's about the implosion seals. Kagome-sensei, I was thinking: what if we take some Hornets, give them implosion seals, and then have them set them off next to the Dragons' chests, or even fly on suicide missions into the mouth and set the seals off as close to the lungs as they can get? Even if the Dragons have invincible scales or impact-dampening forcefields or whatever, having all the air ripped out of their lungs shouldn't be good for them. Does that sound viable to you?"
Kagome-sensei shrugged. "If Dragon lungs are like normal chakra beast lungs, and if Dragons die when their lungs are destroyed like normal chakra beasts do, then sure, it would work. But whether either of those things are true, I have no idea. Seventh Path lore isn't my strong point. My speciality is the true secret history of the world, and the Sage's Dragons got kicked out of that early on."
"Would you be willing to share your implosion seals so we can find out?"
Kagome-sensei shook his head after a second's thought. "If it saves the world, you can have all the seals you like. But if it's for proof of concept, I can make enough seals for one good test run myself. The summons aren't going to reverse-engineer them, and I know I can trust you to make sure nobody else gets a chance. Then, if we reckon it works… I guess there'll be no helping it."
"What about Banshee Fuckers? Can we tune those up to overkill levels and kill them with the vibration? Again, it strikes me as something conventional defences shouldn't be able to stop."
"I think we've hit a wall on those," Kagome-sensei said. "The basic fact is that there's only so loud you can realistically make a sound. You remember how Jiraiya used to boast about how he took out the Sōon Clan on his own? I was too tactful to say it after the first time, but he only had such an easy time because all sound-based weapons run up against hard limits sooner or later."
"There's one thing that bothers me, though," Hazō said. "Dragons can get a summon's powers by eating it. If they consume a seal, will they get its powers too? Could we end up giving them the power to create implosions?"
Kagome-sensei frowned.
"Hard to say. A few of the souldrinkers can absorb that kind of thing, but most can't. No way of knowing which type the Dragons are until you try."
"Souldrinkers?" Hazō asked warily.
"What do they teach you at the Academy these days?" Kagome-sensei said despairingly. "Chakra beasts that can absorb other creatures' powers. Another of the Sage's superweapons gone wrong. Knowing what I know now, I bet they were prototypes for the Dragons."
"What can they do?" Hazō asked. "And are they killable?"
"Some souldrinkers take in the power of what they eat, so if they live long enough, you end up with an unstoppable chimera with a dozen powers. But usually, the powers don't all play nice with each other, so there'll be a crippling weakness somewhere if you can just find it before the chimera kills you. The key is to stop them early, and for the love of all that is holy, do not let them eat a Bloodline Limit bearer. There's all sorts of restrictions on Bloodline Limits to stop them killing the bearer that don't necessarily apply when you've got chakra beast endurance and regeneration and who knows what else.
"But those aren't so bad. What you have to be afraid of are the ones that can pass on powers to their descendants. That's where chakra ponies come from, you know. Half-apex souldrinker half-horse. Lucky for us, horses can't absorb powers, so once the bloodline stabilised, we ended up with a species that didn't keep getting stronger until it ended up wiping out humanity. There have been other close calls, but mostly the Karasu exterminated those.
"Now going back to your question, seal-eating souldrinkers are very rare, but it's hard to say whether that's because it's a very special ability, or whether it's because no sane sealmaster will go within a kilometre of the things, or whether it's because those sealmasters who do never come back to tell the tale because the souldrinkers absorb the power from their seals and use it to kill them."
"Who are the Karasu?" Hazō asked, seizing on a single point of hope. "If they're experts in fighting souldrinkers, do you think they could give us any insight on how to fight Dragons?"
"Warrior poets from the Warring Clans era," Kagome-sensei said in a strange tone that seemed to mix mockery with admiration. "They held the Crow Scroll for a while, and the crows gave them a bunch of forbidden lore which they then used in their sealcrafting even though crows aren't supposed to know jack about seals. Then they used it to hunt the strongest, most dangerous chakra beasts, especially souldrinkers. Whether they were doing it as a public service or whether they were trying to figure out a way to become souldrinkers themselves, we'll never know, because one day they ran afoul of the Uchiha and the Uchiha wiped them out so they could take the scroll. If you're wondering why anything off the main roads and outside Leaf's circle of protection gets wiped out by chakra beasts sooner or later, now you know who's to blame.
"So in a word, no. We're on our own."
Nothing worth doing was ever easy, especially where world-ending eldritch abominations were concerned.
"There has to be a way," Hazō said. "I know even the Sage had trouble with the Dragons, or he'd have killed them, but Kagome-sensei, you know more about the Sage and his work than anyone living."
"Except the Sage himself," Kagome-sensei interjected.
"I'm sorry?"
"I've been meaning to warn you," Kagome-sensei said seriously. "Honestly, I can't believe I didn't see it sooner myself. You remember how I explained about the Sage always being the Hokage, and then faking his own death so he could take over as his own successor?"
"I do."
"Well, I started doubting myself because of Jiraiya. He became Hokage after the Third, and I'm sixty-five, no, seventy percent sure that he wasn't the Sage. Except what happened then? He died a couple of months later. Then Hyūga took his place, and he died within a couple of months too. And who survived the disasters that killed them both, took the hat, and is still alive and well half a year later? The Third's own son.
"You chew on that for a while."
Put like that, there was something uncomfortably compelling about Kagome-sensei's theory.
"Do you think… we could ask him about the Dragons?" Hazō said hesitantly.
"If he knew how to get rid of them, he'd have come up with a way to let us know," Kagome-sensei said. "Don't you remember how he instantly believed you and sent you off on what looked like a fool's errand, where any other Kage would have laughed it off? Besides, you can't just go up to him and tell him you know his secret. That's suicide."
"Still on our own, then," Hazō said morosely. "Isn't there anything we can do? Some way, maybe, of getting them sucked back inside the Great Seal so we don't have to take massive casualties fighting them?"
"Maybe," Kagome-sensei said. "The Sage got them in there somehow in the first place, and I doubt he dragged them in by the tail, one after another. And the basic process involved isn't some fundamental mystery— putting one thing inside another and keeping it there is the very origin of sealing. That's why we call it sealing and not, say, coding."
"Why would we call it coding?" That just sounded ridiculous.
"Because we take our instructions of what the seal is supposed to do, and we convert them into a complicated written language that makes sense to the recipient, which is to say the universe, and nobody else, not even other sealmasters. It's not a coincidence I'm so good at cryptography, you know.
"But it's one thing sealing matter in an extradimensional space the way storage seals do, or even sealing air in an area. Targeting a specific species, and only that species, wherever it may be on a whole Path, and stopping it from using whatever space-time powers it might have to weasel its way out of the effect… where would you even begin?"
Where would you begin? If only they had some kind of aetheric signature for Dragons, something for a seal to target the way a summoning scroll knew to target its summoner or summons no matter where they were… But Hazō didn't know how the summoning scrolls had been made, and that avenue of investigation had been established likely to leave him mad and/or possessed by supernatural horrors. Besides, he doubted he was going to get a Dragon to stay still long enough to take samples of its very soul.
Maybe it was time to move on to a lighter subject.
"Kagome-sensei, what do you make of Yoshida's proposal? Would you be willing to make the journey to Isan to talk to her?" Hazō carefully did not mention anything to do with courtship.
"The stinkers are trying to kidnap me so they can pick my brain for all my sealing secrets and forbidden knowledge," Kagome-sensei said matter-of-factly. "They couldn't be more blatant about it. If they think they can trick old Kagome into jumping into their trap headfirst, they've got another thing coming."
"So that's a no?"
"But," Kagome-sensei continued reluctantly, "I know this would make a big difference for the Isan team. They're all family, even Yuno now, and if this gets the Yoshida to play nice, that'll mean they're in a little less danger in that den of vipers. I'm not going into the Yoshida compound if they hold me at kunai-point, but neutral ground I might consider. Outside Isan if possible, somewhere I've got a chance to set up my own defences."
Hazō nodded. "We can tell them yes for now, and then sort out the details after the alliance is finalised. As Snowflake pointed out, it doesn't violate the spirit of the agreement to quibble about the details of implementation."
"How is she?" Kagome-sensei asked suddenly. "Snowflake, I mean?"
"Fine, I think. Why do you ask?"
Kagome-sensei looked away uncomfortably.
"You know, Hazō, I spent fifteen years on my own in the woods. Then you came along and got me to leave with you. Suddenly, I was supposed to figure out how to be part of a team when I still half-expected you to stab me in the back at any moment. You all trusted me, much much more than anyone ought to trust a stranger. But none of you could see how weird it all was for me. There aren't any guides on how to be a team, or a friend, or family. And I was starting from scratch. I still don't think I'm any good at it. So maybe I know how she feels a little, is all."
"Oh," Hazō said. "I think she's doing OK. We're here for her, and she always has Keiko."
"Good," Kagome-sensei said.
"And Kagome-sensei, I think you're doing fine. You're as good a family member as anyone could ask for."
"That so?" Kagome-sensei said quietly.
Sensing his master's discomfort levels soar, Hazō decided to change the subject. And, unfortunately, there was one thing left he'd wanted to get Kagome-sensei's opinion on.
"Kagome-sensei, there's something that's been bothering me," he said. "Do you… do you think I caused all this? The Dragons escaping, I mean. Only it seems to have happened right around the time we gave the Pangolins seals. And the time of the Akatsuki ritual, I guess. Is there any chance…?"
"I don't think it was the ritual," Kagome-sensei said. "The stinkers never finished whatever they were up to, and besides, it didn't have anything to do with the Paths that we know of. I saw the transcripts, same as you, and it was all 'humanity this', 'humanity that'. I doubt they were trying to do anything to the Summon Realm.
"As for the Pangolins, hard to say. Fact is, the Sage didn't bother leaving any warnings about why you're not supposed to use seals in the Summon Realm. But we know it's a prison, probably made by messing with space-time. The Sage wasn't a sealmaster himself, I've told you that before, but obviously he had friends who were—maybe the very ones he imprisoned there when he decided they knew too much—and it wouldn't be a bad bet that space-time seals were involved in some way. Then the Dragon dimension's a prison within a prison, with a seal on it that's almost certainly a space-time seal.
"Could using a whole load of seals that manipulate space-time inside a dimension made by manipulating space-time have side effects? Knowing what we know now, I can't rule it out.
"Oh, but it's not your fault," Kagome-sensei added hurriedly. "You couldn't have known selling the Pangolins weapons was going to end the world. It's the Sage's fault for doing such a sloppy job in the first place. Whatever you do, don't beat yourself up over it."
"I won't," Hazō lied. There was no way he couldn't, now that the sealmaster he trusted most had acknowledged it as a realistic possibility. Hazō simply couldn't stand the idea of disaster ensuing not because of a brilliant plan going wrong in unpredictable ways (like the way the probably-Hagoromo had nearly tanked the entire Fire Country economy, or the way Hidan had nearly depopulated a civilian village), but because he'd failed to consider the possible consequences of his actions in the first place.
Never mind. Hazō was a clan head. He was capable of multitasking when the circumstances called for it. Part of his brain was assigned the solemn duty of beating himself up until further notice. The rest resumed planning how to save the world.
-o-
You have received 2 + 1 = 3 XP.
-o-
Efforts to secure the military cooperation of clan bosses have run into a minor snag. Specifically, Hazō is a known war criminal who aided and abetted the Pangolin Clan's attempted conquest of the continent. If the clan bosses were initially inclined to be sceptical of claims that a fairy tale was flying around eating people somewhere on the other side of the continent, they will certainly doubt them when Hazō tells them that they must therefore urgently leave their territories undefended. Hazō may have Cannai's support, but the Alpha has limited credibility given that his own domain is too far away to be threatened by the Pangolins and their allies.
-o-
Research for Harumitsu's Outstanding World-Saving Seal is progressing smoothly, or at least as smoothly as it can when the majority of the cooperating sealmasters view each other as rivals as best and dangerous idiots at worst.
-o-
What do you do?
Voting closes on Saturday 5th of June, 1 p.m. New York time.
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- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Is super nice when everything I've been saying get confirmed
- Location
- NY
- Location
- Bulgaria
D'awww Kagome is so wholesome when he isn't talking about hoarding massive amounts of explosives just in-case the Boss of Sky Squids came to visit Hazou in person.
- Location
- United States
Here's a horrifying thought. Is Keiko giving Hazō some insight into her own situation with Shikamaru? She knows she must bear him an heir at some point but finds the prospect so horrifying that the best way to make Hazō understand is by silently comparing it to the Arachnid Queen laying eggs in him.
shudders
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Hazo's a war criminal? I can imagine everyone being mad at him for helping out the Pangolins, but I'm surprised that he's violated international law in the process, in that I'm surprised there's international laws to violate.
- Location
- United States
Snowflake likes Hazō!? Oh god our love life just got so much more complicated.
- Location
- Yes.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hazou trying to obtain another Eldritch gf I see
SENPAI HAS NOTICED ME
We're doomed
IMPOSTER AMONGUS
"Heh, now I'm definitely beating Mari in the weight-of-our-sins contest"
Could Hazou be, idk, tried for his crimes or something? Have our Summoner cabal summon judges, or arrange for him to meet them somewhere? We pretty much can't win the war without the support of other Bosses, and a show of good faith could go a long way. I'm not sure what we could offer in the way of reparations...Might be worth talking to the Condor Clan's Summoner directly first, and asking how he can even begin to, well, not make it right exactly. That's probably not possible. But, perhaps earn enough trust to convince them the Dragon threat is real.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Strictly speaking, he did worse: he broke the taboo on using seals on the Seventh Path. Of course, whether anyone would have cared if it didn't result in the Pangolins taking their stuff is a separate question.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
"Hey Ino, are you okay with the polycule expanding to an indefinite and constantly changing number of individuals? Wait no not like that I mean in the sense of-"
GAME OVER
I thought we were told that the taboo was on making seals on the seventh path? Wasn't there that whole thing when we first made the deal? That there was a taboo on doing sealing on the seventh path, but it said nothing about using seals so buying seals from Hazou was technically okay?
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I mean, come on. The Pangolins did that. Any other sealmaster on the Human Path would have done the same. Jiraiya never lost a wink of sleep over it.
EDIT: grumble grumble
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That is indeed what the Pangolins said while deciding whether it would be acceptable to purchase weapons that would revolutionise their military doctrine and render their worst enemies helpless before them.
It is worth bearing in mind that there is no central religious authority that all clans submit to (as far as Hazō knows) and that could thus provide an authoritative statement on what does and does not break a taboo.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
SC Math for Chapter 437:
@eaglejarl, @Velorien
With Hazou 80% dead and Snowflake busy totally not daydreaming about Hazou, only Akane continues to FOOM. By the SOP, she is training for 6 training blocks. With 2 base XP, the SC payouts are:
@eaglejarl, @Velorien
With Hazou 80% dead and Snowflake busy totally not daydreaming about Hazou, only Akane continues to FOOM. By the SOP, she is training for 6 training blocks. With 2 base XP, the SC payouts are:
- Akane: +1.2 XP (2 x0.6)
Eisenhelm
gran dutch of douchery
- Location
- Colombia
not necessary, seal everything in a radius. dangerous but doable.
- Location
- United States
I don't know why but this statement is just so beautiful to me.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
ASUMA: So, Hazō, tell me again how you ended all summoning everywhere ever and destroyed Leaf's primary strategic advantage.
HAZŌ: But, sir, how was I to know that the Seventh Path was also within the radius?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
Revolution inherently is dangerous to those who were in power pre-revolution.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...You know, given their characterizations, I could totally see Ino and Kei doing this.
...Welp, the Goketsu might soon have familial ties to Isan through more than just Yuno.
I'm also a little proud of the fact that I successfully modeled Kei not being too concerned with the second requirement, since she's basically already doing that.
Kei tots got similar gifts. If she didn't, then she'd take the opportunity to wax poetic about how she pales in comparison to her sister. But if Kei got such gifts, I could see her not wanting to mention that fact out of feeling awkward and not completely worthy of such affections. And if Kei does hold romantic affection for Hazou, then I could see her not wanting to bring up previous suitors in front of someone she wants to pursue.
Also, I genuinely love this aspect of the worldbuilding. The Mori Clan have interesting dating rituals, and it completely falls in line with everything we know about them (either through dialogue about them, or through how being raised in the Mori Clan Culture has shaped both Kei and Ami).
Didn't Ami gift Hazou super rare and ancient writings of a famous sealmaster? And didn't she rejoice a little too eagerly when Hazou proved he "really understands" Ami by asking for a "partnership with the Ami?" And didn't Kei seem rather despondent when she thought Ami was dating Hazou? And when Kei told Ami to reign herself in during that "partnership with the Ami" treetop scene, she didn't tell Ami "he doesn't feel that way for you" or anything similar, her response was "Hazou isn't polyamorous" which is now, provably, not true.
Huh. Ami gave her courtship gift to Hazou a while ago, and has basically made every interaction with him a puzzle...
[snerk]
I think Kei's already provided the best advice available: if Shikamaru isn't against it, allow Shiori to continue her pursuit and see if romantic affections blossom. Even if nothing comes of it, emotions are indicators and not dictators. Shiori and Shika can have a healthy friendship --they obviously respect each other's agency, competency, and well-being --and Shiori will likely fall in love with someone else down the road.
Honestly, the Nara sign language has a lot of synergy with CCnJ. We should devote time (after the Dragon and Isan arcs) to learning it to better facilitate clear communication with Kei, Snowflake, and Shika (either as wholesome, heartwarming scenes, or offscreen via shadow clone, maybe.)
Heh, Kei teasing Hazou never gets old. I love it ^.^
Kei has Hazou utterly at her mercy and I love it.
Is... is Kei playing wingwoman for her sister by mentioning her mastery of lists?
Asuma was Hokage at the time, right? Given that he's dating Kurenai, the creation of KEI might have been a net plus for his personal life. Heck, it's probably a net plus for Leaf itself, and Asuma can respect that, even as he hates how it's given him yet another political entity to juggle.
Called it ^.^
(Snowflake is adorable)
Can't think clearly while looking at Hazou, huh? :3
I also suspect that there's more subtext to this conversation. As I've said here, I suspect that Kei (regardless of whether or not her maybe-former crush on Hazou was emotionally-based or intellectually-based) has been more than compassionate with Snowflake wrt Snowflake's romantic affections. And the most common/default advice is "Okay, you feel this way. What do you want to do about them? Pursue, ignore, some variation thereof?" So I suspect Kei's asked Snowflake this, and she hasn't come to a decision (or has, but hasn't done anything due to time constraints).
So Kei, being both mischievous, dramatic, and an ever-supporter of her loved ones, creates an opportunity and mercilessly throws Snowflake into it, and Snowflake trades barbs with Kei as a result. Adorable interactions, if so.
Yup, Hazou's definitely learning how to speak social-spec jonin.
Oh, that's evil! :3
...Please do, though.
Agreed ^.^
My respect for Kei has increased... I didn't know that was even possible.
...A proof of concept gone awry?
So it sounds like all species of chakra beasts originated from a corresponding ancestral souldrinker species. The Sage really fucked this world up, didn't he?
Ninja-culture ruined Bards on their rise to power, and also the Souldrinker Extermination Clan... goddamn it.
Sounds like all of Kagome's theories in general.
I've spoken before how I think all of the modern day Elemental Nations are descendant from the Sage's ancestral clan or village, right? The overall lack of linguistic drift being the main point. Well, given that the Eternal Forest exists, and reincarnation does, what if the Hokage ("true" Hokage that lasts longer than 6 months) must be a direct reincarnation of the Sage's main family/core squad of heroes?
I suppose it could simply be that benevolent rulers (backed by the might of S-rank hard power) simply last longer than cruel ones (seriously, Hiruzen reigned long enough that his personality had to have had a massive influence on Leaf's culture). But that answer is boring, and innocent stargazing is fun.
Oh, Kagome. If only you knew how well you are known, and how much you are loved. Man needs a hug, and all the positive affirmation in the goddamned world.
I also love Insightful Kagome coming out when Honoka's not here. It means that Kagome is willing to be vulnerable around Hazou, and everyone needs someone they can be vulnerable with.
Oh, honey...
I was right!
Oh no, I was right...
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
At this rate it's probably going to be Hazou
ohno