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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
Jiraiya looked thoughtful. "Huh. Interesting idea." He pondered it for a minute. "So far as I know, no one has ever tried that. I can't say for sure what would happen, but I'm reasonably sure it wouldn't work. Summoning contracts are essentially very elaborate, very powerful seals. Intent and identity matter when you're doing sealing, so I'd be very surprised if you could sign for someone else. Aside from that, I don't know where we'd get a sample of his blood and chakra. Still, good thought. And good job on the OPSEC."
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Sounds like a worthy experiment

edit:
hmm, i wonder what would happen if you kill the initial summon that appears when you sign a summoning scroll
 
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Let's try something with Asuma.

"Y'know what? You recently brought up the fact that we chose Leaf. You did it as if that were some sort of condemnation.
You explicitly cited it as a absence of commitment.
Before my next killbox session let us make something absolutely clear. We did not need to come here.
We had exclusive access to a miraculous tool which could have bought us forgiveness from Yagura himself and allowed us to retire in the comfort of our families.
You personally know just how important that would have been to us. You personally witnessed me threaten the Jounin commander of the most powerful nation in the entire history of the world simply because I thought that my doubly-foresaken clanmates had been indentured.
Wise? No. Conspicuously compelling testimony as to my motivations? Yes.
We had a choice and we chose Leaf because a brilliant madman won us over with his sheer conviction and made us believe. That is not a flaw. That is our incontrovertible virtue. Unlike everybody who happened to be born on the correct side of an imaginary line on a map we made a choice and it cost. We knew it would cost, and we made the choice anyway. I still don't understand the full philosophy of the Will of Fire, but I have already bet my life that I know it better than anyone."
 
Sentient Tree said:
Doesn't spider silk shrink when lit on fire? So there still could be negative consequences for being hit by a fire jutsu and surviving.
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I don't think anyone's actually made a garment out of real spider silk and then lit it on fire, but most clothes are more or less ruined by being hit with a fire jutsu and surviving. Spider silk isn't particularly vulnerable to fire and there's no reason to focus on it. I am concerned that silk has some sort of cultural cachet with the Arachnids and we'll commit some sort of faux pas by asking for some.
Wikipedia said:
All spiders produce silk, and even in non-web building spiders, silk is intimately tied to courtship and mating. Silk produced by females provides a transmission channel for male vibratory courtship signals, while webs and draglines provide a substrate for female sex pheromones. Observations of male spiders producing silk during sexual interactions are also common across phylogenetically widespread taxa. However, the function of male-produced silk in mating has received very little study.
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Kinda sounds like asking for some is going to be a disaster.
 
Sir Stompy said:
I don't think anyone's actually made a garment out of real spider silk and then lit it on fire, but most clothes are more or less ruined by being hit with a fire jutsu and surviving. Spider silk isn't particularly vulnerable to fire and there's no reason to focus on it. I am concerned that silk has some sort of cultural cachet with the Arachnids and we'll commit some sort of faux pas by asking for some.

Kinda sounds like asking for some is going to be a disaster.
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We literally talked about exchanging spider silks for goods with the Spider Queen and she didn't so much as blink.
 
eaglejarl said:
That's fine, but don't suggest that we should give one of the characters a sex toy for her birthday (which is a thing that a player did and a mod frowned at) or, god forbid, anything like what Mari suggested here, which caused this reaction.
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Looking over that chapter you pointed out to me, it's extremely clear how OOC Hazō was acting with regards to the Yakuza situation. No wonder Akane responded the way she did.
eaglejarl said:
Do you intend to inform me of your actual plans?" Kei asked, after waiting long enough to be sure that there was no more information forthcoming.

"Yup. First, I need Pandamonium, Pangaya, Panjandrum, and Pankurashun. Noburi, be ready with the water."

Kei eyed him dubiously for a moment. "You realize that there is a tremendous amount of damage to the Nara estate that I should be assisting with?"

Hazō straightened and turned to face her for the first time since he, Kei, Noburi, Kenta, and the four confused civilians (to whom she had not yet been introduced, due to Hazō's utter focus and dismissal of the rest of the universe!) had arrived in the overgrown jungle that was the Gōketsu backyard.

Hazō's face was utterly blank but his eyes burned with simmering anger. When he spoke, his words were frozen harder than the ground they stood on.

"From what I saw, the damage to the Nara estate is largely property damage that can be fixed by any competent construction worker. Likewise, you have some dead about whom nothing can be done and only a few wounded, whom someone else can care for as well or better than you. I, on the other hand, have two hundred and fifty-ish people who are going to be showing up on my doorstep sometime in the next hour, desperate for a place to sleep out of the cold. They have nowhere to go; their houses are destroyed, their families and friends are all dead and their houses were destroyed, and they can't afford to pay for an inn. If someone doesn't step up and help them they'll freeze to death before morning. I'm not going to let that happen. If necessary then yes, I'll have them packed cheek-by-jowl into the house, but I'd rather give them their own quarters. As to you, you are either Team Uplift or you're not. If you abandoned us for the Nara, fine. Go. If not, summon your pangolins so that we can make those people some shelter."

The force of his anger almost physically pushed at her and Kei stepped back, away from the intensity of it. Kenta and the unnamed civilians, already jumpy from the way Hazō had been using small implosion bombs as brooms to clear the snow from their path, stepped back quite a bit farther than she had and looked as though they were one angry glance from outright fleeing.
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The difference between Hazō here and when questioning Haru is like night and day.
 
Kiba said:
We literally talked about exchanging spider silks for goods with the Spider Queen and she didn't so much as blink.
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Source? I looked and couldn't find this.

I did find that they use silk as a building material, and they have weaverkin, presumably spiders who do nothing but weave silk. There is probably no problem. Let's just ask a weaverkin for 100 yards of cloth and have it tailored into armor.
 
Shrooms said:
Maybe this is just me but I would see that as more of a sign of major distress than something to be angry about...
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For her it must had felt like a stab in the back. She is angry at Hazou for not having done anything inmediatly but angrier whit herself for it happening under her watch. Although she doesn't see it as hazou being overworked and demoralized enough to not put effort into dealing whit it and letting it pass by while taking care of a bigger project, she sees it as a flaw on his character that always being there and is just now showing up.
I think that once she cools down they can talk it out. I would be a shame to loose hazo's confidant, morality anchor, motivation and waifu over some wording
 
Shrooms said:
Maybe this is just me but I would see that as more of a sign of major distress than something to be angry about...
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For her it must had felt like a stab in the back. She is angry at Hazou for not having done anything inmediatly but angrier whit herself for it happening under her watch. Although she doesn't see it as hazou being overworked and demoralized enough to not put effort into dealing whit it and letting it pass by while taking care of a bigger project, she sees it as a flaw on his character that always being there and is just now showing up. I think that once she cools down they can talk it out. I would be a shame to loose the best confidant, morality anchor, motivation and waifu over some wording
 
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Chapter 449: The Joys and Perils of NPC Agency
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    • Ino stared silently at Hazō. Hazō stared silently at Ino. The low table between them, unadorned by drinks, separated them with all the cold implacability of a Multiple Earth Wall. This wouldn't be the first time Ino was furious that he'd seriously hurt Akane, and for all that the two of them were closer than ever (if only by millimetres on the scale of the abyss of distrust natural to two senior ninja from different clans), Hazō wasn't optimistic enough to expect much mercy.

    "How is she?" Hazō asked.

    "Asleep. Finally. I'll go see if she's awake in a minute." Ino's gaze sharpened." I have a few things to say to you first that she'd be in no state to hear."

    Hazō had come so far, and he still didn't really have a plan for what he was doing. Uplift was supposed to be simple. He just wanted to make the world a better place for everyone—yes, both civilians and ninja—and while nothing worth doing was ever easy, the why of what he was doing should have been straightforward. All human life was precious. Knowledge and education were civilisation's lights of hope, and a true light shone equally on everyone. Nature was the mother of invention, and her daughter was destined to surpass her and fix all her mistakes. No belief, ideology, or religion was worth clinging to if it prevented people from being excellent to each other. These aphorisms and a hundred more rolled off his tongue so easily, he barely had to think.

    So why, when he already knew all the answers, did he keep making bad choices? Yes, anything that made Akane mad with him was a capital-letter Bad Choice. He didn't need it explained to him, now he'd stopped to actually think about the issue, why Haru murdering yakuza was bad, not just for them, or for the Gōketsu, or (arguably) for Leaf, but also for the just and compassionate society that existed in Hazō's head, waiting to be made real. He didn't need it explained to him, after a depressingly long time to reflect, that joining Orochimaru might have been a shortcut to defeating death, but the person Hazō would have become after years of embracing Orochimaru's methods and research ethics, even partly, would not have been someone to trust with humanity's future.

    There were plenty of other bad choices. He didn't dare try to list them all in case it left him in no state to work on his relationship with Akane. He already knew that one of his major failure modes was coming up with a brilliant solution to the problem in front of him without taking enough time to ask why, to understand the structural reasons behind what was going on and therefore the consequences that he would provoke from the underlying cause. It seemed like the same was true for understanding himself. If Hazō had known himself better, surely he'd have been able to anticipate his failure with Haru, and figure out in advance how to do better.

    His relationship with Uplift had to be a core part of that. To Akane and Kei, Uplift was a set of ideals to believe in. Bit by bit, they tried to bring their lives and actions into alignment with the images of Uplift they had in their heads. Akane was a natural. The same personality that made her so ill-suited for ninja society also meant that she grasped on instinct things Hazō had just proved he could forget. In another world, a world that didn't favour ruthlessness and deception over compassion and wisdom, she might have been able to achieve Uplift all on her own.

    Kei was the opposite of a natural. She was cynical, pessimistic, misanthropic, and inclined to view the world at large with a hatred that reflected (or perhaps expressed) her hatred of herself. That she had embraced Uplift anyway was an impossible triumph on both their parts. She rarely talked about what Uplift meant to her, but Hazō, these days, was perceptive enough to understand that this was because she'd moved it into the category of things too personal to share lightly. If Akane represented Hazō's vision of Uplift made flesh, then he couldn't begin to imagine where Kei would end up with hers.

    Noburi and Mari were different. Noburi had blundered into the field of medicine pretty much by accident, but once there he'd identified a problem, and decided that Uplift meant it needed to be solved. He didn't disagree with Hazō's vision. Far from it. He simply left the big picture to those better suited for it, and focused on making a practical difference here and now, to the point of spending all his post-Isan time on the difficult and largely thankless task of studying medicine instead of drawing on his natural advantages to continue to become a ninjutsu badass. At some point, Hazō needed to figure out a way to combine that down-to-earth attitude with enough of his big-picture capabilities to help Noburi become more than the next Tsunade (who never put down the scalpel, and had done more for medicine than anyone in history, but still hadn't changed the world the way it needed to be changed).

    Mari's Uplift was different enough from Hazō's to be a little scary. Unlike the kids, who'd started out ready to embrace new convictions on their own merit, Mari was an adult who'd woven the quest to change the world into the web of her existing personal issues and concerns. A doer rather than a dreamer, to date Mari had done more to further the cause of Uplift than anyone except maybe Hazō himself, but the past that made her so competent and goal-oriented also persistently threatened to drag her off the path. It was beyond Hazō to read her mind and figure out how many of her actions were really driven by Uplift, as opposed to loyalty to her family and clan, harmless selfishness of the kind they all sometimes indulged in (except maybe Akane), or the darker motivations of a woman shaped by an inescapably twisted past.

    Kagome-sensei, Hazō suspected, was different still. Kagome-sensei didn't have a grand vision for transforming a world that a large part of him still saw as an immediate, deadly enemy. Kagome-sensei didn't roll up his sleeves and head out in the morning to champion his chosen cause while leaving the bird's eye view to those more dedicated to that kind of thing. Kagome-sensei, more than any of them, was just a man who saw an opportunity to do good that was within his reach, and did it because it felt right.

    "Earth to Hazō. Time's a-wasting."

    "What? Sorry, Ino." Hazō bowed his head in maximum contrition. Ino wasn't the most patient of people at the best of times, and there was little she hated more than being ignored. "What did you want to say?"

    "Listen," Ino said, leaning forward in her seat. "By rights, I ought to be reaming you out for betraying your special Uplift bond with a girl who's worth a hundred of us, and you should probably consider me to have done that anyway because it's bad policy to skip it. But just this once, I'm actually in your corner.

    "I get that you guys are all committed to civilian welfare. I even respect it, sort of. I'm past trying to hide that I have a thing for the serious type. But you made the right call with the yakuza stuff. No question. A few civilian lives are nothing when it comes to the safety of your clan, never mind when it's a bunch of thugs off the street rather than someone who'll be missed. Akane's an idealist, and that's fine most of the time, but you and I both know that a clan head has to think differently. Honestly, I'm relieved that you're not so obsessed with your philosophy that you lose sight of what matters.

    "But that's me as a fellow clan head. Me as Akane's best friend since forever and your lover as of a few weeks ago is so pissed off after spending all of yesterday picking up the pieces that the only reason I'm not kicking your ass right now is that I need you to fix what you broke. Hashirama's bulging bushes, Hazō, if you can screw up something as trivial as a few civilian killings this badly, I'm scared of what you'll do when any of us have a difference of opinion over something that matters."

    Silently, Hazō thanked Ino both for her good intentions and for making a difficult situation even more complicated.

    "No, Ino," he said, using up some of the limited determination he'd been able to scrape up for this morning. "Those killings were not trivial. I'm not going to tell you how to run your clan, but the Gōketsu don't sacrifice civilians for our own benefit just because they're civilians and we're ninja. You're right, if they were an active, immediate threat to the clan, I'd have some hard choices to make, but those choices still wouldn't be based on the belief that killing civilians is OK compared to killing ninja.

    "Akane is one hundred percent right about everything. I screwed up because I did the wrong thing, not because I did the right thing badly. I may have made mistakes before because I was ignorant, or because I overestimated my abilities, or maybe even because I was too stupid to realise something important. I'm sure I'll make many more before I'm done. But the one thing Gōketsu Hazō has no excuse for, the one thing nobody has any excuse for, is being a hypocrite."

    "But if you know that, then why?" came a voice from behind him. "I just don't understand."

    Hazō turned around to look at Akane. She was all right. Thank the Sage that she was all right.

    Well, all right by the standards of someone who'd just been ideologically stabbed in the back by the person she trusted most in the world. He could tell that she hadn't had enough sleep, and the red eyes were a good hint as to why. Her look wasn't of that the blindingly bright, irresistible anger he'd expected. It wasn't of sorrow, either, the way one might look at a fallen hero or (praise the Sage) a soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. All it conveyed was helpless incomprehension.

    "Because I should have evaluated the situation morally, and I didn't," Hazō said. "Somewhere in the back of my head was the idea that Asuma had told me to stop Haru, so I'd stop Haru, and that would be another problem solved, and maybe I'd come back to it sometime when I was done with everything more important and think about how to make sure it didn't happen again.

    "Uplift is an ideal, and it's not an ideal that permits the casual killing of civilians. If I didn't know the right thing to do, I should have consulted you and the rest of the team, and I promise you that's what I'll do if this kind of situation comes up again."

    "I don't understand," Akane repeated. "None of this was about the right thing to do. There's no easy solution to how to punish Haru. I was never expecting you to come up with one on the spot. The thing I can't accept, Hazō, the thing that makes no sense, is that you never acted like you needed to find one. I expected to see you outraged, or appalled, or even in that rational damage control mode you sometimes go into in an emergency. Instead, you just shrugged it off, like Haru murdering half a dozen people didn't deserve more than getting a bit annoyed, and three weeks later you remembered to make him stop."

    Hazō looked at Ino in his peripheral vision, but she seemed to have decided that intervention by someone who didn't understand either of their perspectives wasn't going to help.

    "You're right," Hazō repeated. "I'm grateful that you called me out when I was failing to live up to my ideals, and I really am sorry for how I acted."

    "Don't apologise to me," Akane said. "This was never about hurting me. I just don't understand. How do you forget to be a decent person? How do you forget that killing people is bad? When did this happen, and why didn't I notice?

    "How do you act as if yakuza are subhumans you can just kill off? You told me you gambled with the yakuza when you were a kid. You played at yakuza-run casinos as a missing-nin. You made deals with the Oyabun in Mist like he was an equal, almost a superior. You said he was intelligent, insightful, charming, and very dangerous, and it sounded like you respected all of that. Are yakuza only people when you have a use for them?

    "How can you have a lever in your head that flips you between being the hero I fell in love with and some kind of monster that dehumanises people based on a single word, without caring enough to ask what crimes—if any—those six individuals actually committed, or why?

    "I just don't understand."

    The room was cold—not in a Kei way; there was just no warmth left in it. That wasn't something that happened when Akane was around.

    Ino was (elegantly) burying herself in her armchair, unable to meet either of their eyes. She wasn't going to be of any help. Not that Hazō had any idea what kind of help she could provide in this situation, short of reading his mind to see what had gone wrong with it. Which, actually, wasn't the worst idea, provided there was some way to make sure she stayed away from clan secrets.

    Or maybe it was. Hazō had no idea how letting his new girlfriend inside his head might change their relationship, and this was definitely not the time to find out.

    "I don't know," Hazō replied into the hollow silence. "I really don't know why my brain didn't make the connection between Haru killing yakuza and Haru killing yakuza. I don't have any thoughts on the subject that don't sound like excuses, and I don't want to act like dismissing civilian deaths is excusable."

    "Tell me anyway," Akane said.

    Hazō took a little time to compose his thoughts. He'd said it all to himself, in that one fantasy, but he couldn't just present it the way it had been. It had conveyed the way he'd felt at the time pretty accurately, but he wasn't stupid enough to believe that a fantasy in which he was as right as possible and everybody reacted exactly how he wanted them to react was going to be a good foundation for understanding reality.

    "Again," he said, "I don't want to present excuses. Stress and exhaustion should never get people off the hook for acting immorally. But if I had to come up with theories for what went wrong, I think that's where I'd start.

    "I came close to death not long ago. My body's still in pretty awful shape, and maybe it's not obvious, but the Great Seal fried my brain just as badly. At the same time, I haven't had a moment to relax, a moment in which nothing was going wrong, since... well, I can't remember for how long. The Gōketsu keep careening from crisis to crisis, sometimes through no fault of our own, and most of the time, I have to take charge and get everything sorted out, all while running the various ongoing projects and dealing with the ongoing challenges that have to be run and dealt with for the clan to prosper and Uplift to advance, and also managing the personal issues of everyone in the clan. In the past few weeks alone, I've had to help with research to prevent an apocalypse, risk my life putting that research into action, worry about clan finances, save the Isan team, and then manage the interpersonal crises they brought back with them. There's almost certainly a bunch of other stuff I can't remember right now, and it's probably better that way."

    "Again, I'm not saying that this is an excuse. Asuma has far more on his plate, never gets a day off, has more opportunities to get things wrong than I can imagine, and still manages to be the moral exemplar for Leaf at large. But if I was trying to diagnose which sickness spirits were behind the issue, I think that's where I'd start."

    Ino and Akane exchanged a very long look. Hazō could practically hear "You want to take this?" "No, you first."

    "Hazō," Ino said gently, "I don't know everything you've been doing or everything you've had to deal with, though if what I know about the Gōketsu is representative... yeah. It's no wonder you're so stressed. But the one thing that stands out from what you've just said is that you're not acting like a clan head at all."

    Hazō gave her a puzzled look.

    "I mean, I get that your clan's small and you don't have many people to delegate to. But, like, have you actually talked to your people about this stuff? As in, told them that clan heading is getting a bit too much for you and you could really do with moral support and maybe somebody else to shoulder some of your work so you can take a breath?"

    Hazō couldn't. Maybe it was different for the Yamanaka, but there was too much only he could do. He had too many ideas the others wouldn't understand, or would half-understand and mess up, the way Mari had messed up printing the scrip, and whenever there was a crisis, they needed the swift and decisive planning that he did better than anyone, and in any case, he was the clan head. The clan was his responsibility. Jiraiya had never fobbed off his work on other people.

    "So help me," Ino said, "if you just thought 'I can't trust my people with the important stuff', or 'Only I can do the job and the clan would fall apart without me', or 'I'm the clan head so everything is my responsibility', I am going to borrow the stick up Shika's ass and make you eat it."

    Hazō hadn't even seen her making the hand seals.

    "This is not how you run a clan, Hazō," Ino said. "In the nicest possible way, of course you're careening from crisis to crisis if you've got all your eggs in one mental basket which is constantly getting crushed by pressure. A clan head delegates. Even if It's inefficient. If there are some projects you have to give up on because you're busy and there's no one else who can do them, you give up on them. You don't just keep piling more on and ignore the fact that more multitasking means more mistakes. That's a snappier version of a Nara saying, by the way, and even if you think I'm just a pretty face, you had better believe the Nara know all there is to know about optimisation.

    "Also, I'll say this so Akane doesn't have to: not trusting your clan isn't a good look on you. If Akane and the others need telling how stressed you are now, that means you've been keeping them at arm's length before, and that isn't cool. That goes double for your girlfriend who loves and trusts you so much it's a little creepy. No offence, Akane. If you're going around trying to fix everyone's problems, but you don't let them try to fix yours... Well, this is your other girlfriend telling you that that isn't how healthy relationships work."

    "I don't want this to turn into a lecture," Akane said. "That's not what this conversation is about, and frankly this sounds like something that needs its own extended discussion, with more people and maybe Noburi's SOP, at a time when you and I aren't… this. But I do want to say one thing.

    "Well, two things. The first is that Ino is right about everything. Hazō, if you're hurting, let us help you. Please. I can't stand the thought that you've been suffering in silence because you couldn't trust us to help. Even if you think your problems are too big for us to handle, at least let us try before you give up and go back to sacrificing yourself for the clan."

    Hazō didn't know what to say. At the end of his fantasy, he'd thrown the clan at the others and gone away to do the things that mattered. If Ino was saying that he could have done that, on a smaller scale, at any time, and the only thing stopping him was lack of trust in his family... that didn't paint Hazō in a light he liked at all.

    "The second thing is that you don't have to push yourself to get everything done. Do you remember when I told you that you'd changed, and you weren't the Hazō who saw people as tools anymore?"

    Ino gave them an uncertain, alarmed look, but Akane shook her head a little.

    "It sounds like you're making the mirror image of the same mistake. You care about our thoughts and feelings now, and that's wonderful. But... I don't mean to steal Kei's shtick, but please respect our agency."

    "What are you talking about, Akane?" Hazō asked. "Of course I respect your agency. Maybe you don't realise it, but I spend a great deal of time thinking about what you all want and how you feel. I make sure to ask you what you want to do rather than just giving you orders. When someone's struggling, I notice, and I try to fix their problems in a way that leaves them happy, not just a way that benefits the clan."

    Akane gave a sad little smile. "That's not what I mean, Hazō. I'm grateful for everything you do. We all are. What you did yesterday aside, you're a good leader and a good friend. But what is it that you think the rest of us do while you're busy making decisions and helping people?"

    -o-​

    Weeks earlier…

    Sadly, Akane rarely got to visit the Nara compound, with its subtly elegant architecture, and its aura of indolent peace that made such a contrast with the beehive that was the Gōketsu home, and its people whose overheard conversations were a beautiful, alien language (or two). But Akane knew full well that Shikamaru didn't appreciate unnecessary visitors (or any other kind of visitors, really, but they all had to make sacrifices for the village). Tenten wouldn't know what to do with them. And while Akane loved Kei as much as any of the others, and missed her now she'd stopped coming to the compound in order to avoid Mari, their worldviews were so different that they didn't tend to seek each other out for extended conversations.

    Today was special.

    "Thank you for coming," Kei told her. She was clearly trying to be relaxed and welcoming, but the tea tray trembled as she placed it on the low table between them.

    "I apologise for forcing you to come all this way from the Gōketsu compound."

    "Not at all," Akane said. "It's not like it's a hardship to drop by my own village. I don't spend enough time here anyway.

    "Besides," she added mischievously, "thanks to you, I'm getting plenty of youthful exercise."

    Akane felt a flicker of pride at Kei's eye roll, which only a year ago would have been a glare. It was proof of a bond of trust, growing slowly over the course of a hundred unimportant conversations, that Kei recognised when she was being deliberately teased, and responded accordingly.

    Kei slid a plaque into place and shut the door without further comment.

    "So..." she asked uneasily as she sat down in one of the leather armchairs, "is all well?"

    With Ino, Akane would have launched into any one of a number of amusing anecdotes about recent events in the compound (if nothing else, Noburi's pranks and Hazō's reactions always kept things interesting).

    "Kei, would I be right in guessing that you have something important on your mind and dread the idea of having to wade through an unpredictable amount of small talk before you can get to it, but aren't comfortable saying so because you don't want to offend me right when you're about to ask me for something?"

    Kei sagged slightly in relief. "I knew there was a reason I tolerated someone like you dating my de facto sister-in-law."

    "Yes," Akane said. "It leaves her less time to take you clothes shopping."

    "A service meritorious beyond the dreams of veteran jōnin," Kei said. "As an expression of my profound gratitude, I will permit you to use the word 'youth', or a derivative, in my presence one more time today."

    "I'll save it for a time of need," Akane said. "So what's up, Kei?"

    "Akane," Kei said slowly, hesitantly. "Do you remember the conversation we had in the aftermath of my cataclysmic first meeting with Snowflake?"

    Akane nodded. Of course she remembered. It was after that conversation that the distance between them had begun to close, by tiny increments, to the point where they could sit and talk like this without the sense of a countdown hanging overhead until their next argument.

    "You told me," Kei said, "that if the time ever came, you would help me step into the sunlight."

    Akane reeled inside as she processed the implication.

    "So you changing your name wasn't just a whim, then?" she asked lightly so as to buy her emotions time to catch up.

    "Unfortunately," Kei said, "my hair is already too short to cut dramatically, so a different element of my personal identity had to suffice.

    "As it happens, Snowflake has been suggesting that I grow my hair out, though I do not need our memory link to perceive her ulterior motive. Still, the idea of never needing another"—she shuddered—"haircut..."

    "So," Akane asked tentatively, "Kei, are you saying that you're ready?"

    "I am willing," Kei clarified. "I may never be ready. No, even 'willing' is an exaggeration. It would be more accurate to say that I have recognised that I have no choice."

    "What do you mean?"

    "Akane," Kei said, "you know who I am. I am no champion—of people, places, or ideals. I am an ordinary girl. No, worse. I am self-centred, arrogant, volatile, un-self-aware, and possessed of more other flaws than there are stars in the sky. Despite them, through impossible fortune and the unearned kindness of others, I have found myself in a position of power and influence which I do not deserve and for which I am not qualified. This is what I believe.

    "But this Kei, the only Kei I have ever known, can no longer be allowed to exist. I do not possess the luxury of self-hatred."

    Akane stared at her blankly. She had waited for this moment for so long, a large part of her afraid that it would never happen. Yet now that it was here, it was nothing like what she had imagined.

    "I am the second-in-command of the Nara now. The clan needs leadership and guidance more than ever now, yet its old leader is gone. His second-in-command is gone. Most of the elders who would support the heir in such a crisis are gone, and those who remain are... problematic. Shikamaru cannot be allowed to bear this burden alone even as he mourns the loss of his entire family. I must be the leader the Nara require and deserve, even as an outsider who lacks the necessary training and has yet to fully earn their trust. It is futile to list the many failings that render me ineligible for such a role. Doing so will not support Shikamaru or those whom fate has placed in my care.

    "I am a third of the leadership of the KEI. The least third, certainly, but even then, I cannot permit myself to be irresponsible. To Naruto, the KEI is a tool for the betterment of the village. Like the Hokage, he will crush it utterly and without hesitation should he ever consider it a threat to same, even at the cost of its members' welfare. To Ami, the KEI is a stepping stone to greater things. She serves the organisation faithfully, for as a Mori she is a perfectionist when she is not sowing chaos, but the day will come when it has served whatever mysterious purpose inspired its creation, and on that day, she will grow bored and move on. Such is the fate of genius.

    "I do not believe I am the only one of the Triumvirate to have been changed by the experience of holding so many futures in my hand. Still, they do not see the KEI as I do. The KEI is young. Vulnerable. Filled with potential beyond anything I have ever read of. It requires and deserves a leader who will nurture and protect it, and guide its members to fulfil that potential. The notion that I am capable of nurturing anything is laughable, yet there is no one else who can serve this role, not now that the mighty and the wise have been scythed down, and the survivors must devote their time to filling the gaps they left behind. Complaining that I am desperately unqualified will not aid those whose visions for a better future will come to nothing without proper coordination and resource allocation.

    "And then there is the other."

    And then there was the other. Akane had found out purely by accident, and to Kei's great displeasure, after bumping into the unforgettable Yoku Hatten in the street during the bank run investigation.

    Akane had to admit she'd wondered, in the aftermath of the failed Rainbow Revolution, how they'd escaped with practically no consequences. Hazō had declared the Gōketsu Clan to be official supporters of something the majority of ninja thought repulsive. He had declared himself bisexual (obviously, he hadn't, but apparently "I want to explore my sexuality" had been too nuanced a concept for some). Worst of all, he had claimed that many of Leaf's revered fallen heroes were probably gay, and Lord Hokage himself had later told him this had been a grave miscalculation. Then, before they could follow through with a massive campaign to shift public opinion and normalise their radical actions, Lord Hokage had shut the whole thing down, leaving them in the worst of all possible worlds.

    There should have been backlash. There should have been a price to pay. Lord Hokage was not a man who cried chakra sheep.

    Instead, Kei had silently decided that, since thanks to the Hagoromo she would suffer from homophobia no matter what she did, she'd claim responsibility for the gaming night (which had, after all, been formally an event to support her), leaving the main Gōketsu to pursue their Uplift projects unhampered by public disapproval and discrimination. Hazō's "sins" were officially hers, performed at her request, with his entirely noble love for his sister tragically overriding his better judgement (and while Lord Gōketsu was known for many things, good judgement was not top of the list). If any were to be hated, it would be the girl who had already revealed herself as deviant before the entire Clan Council.

    Akane did not have a list of co-conspirators to yell at. Shikamaru, Ami, Naruto, and Ino were all strong candidates, as people who could help Kei plan the project in defiance of the Frozen Skein and/or influence the rumour mill in a way her own social skills would never manage. Unfortunately, Kei had sworn her to silence, on the logic that the Gōketsu would rush to help her if they felt she was in need, thereby undoing everything she'd achieved (and that Hazō might be furious with her for taking "credit" for his work in the public eye, though Akane felt this was doing him an injustice).

    On reflection, it seemed odd that Mari, at least, hadn't found out, given how she usually stayed on top of Leaf's rumour mill. Had she really missed it? Was she a co-conspirator? Or had she found out and just decided to keep it to herself for the good of the clan?

    "There is only one gay person of influence and power in Hidden Leaf," Kei said heavily. "Or at least, only one known and willing to take a stance. It would not have mattered had Hazō's plan succeeded, but we have the Hokage and the Hagoromo to thank for shutting him down in favour of a despicable status quo. I have, to date, failed miserably to provide the sexual minorities of Leaf with the support and protection they deserve, or to fulfil the promises we were forced to break. Still, I am their symbol now, however reluctant. With Hazō having moved on to other projects, and in any case unable to risk the Hokage's wrath, I am all they have. I intend to burn however much of my capital from Isan is necessary to implement the Concubine Laws. That at least I can believe to be within my power. Beyond that, I could dwell as much as I desire on my lack of the courage or strength of will to defy this world I hate, and it would advance their cause not a jot."

    "Kei," Akane said after some thought, "I still want to help you, and please don't take offence at this, but I really don't think that trying to become a better person so you can pile more pressure on yourself is a healthy way to do personal growth."

    "I do not care," Kei said flatly. "Were you not listening, Akane? If I abandon these people—for any reason—no one will take my place. I am not choosing to pursue personal growth out of preference, with the luxury of choosing the best possible motivation. I am doing so out of necessity. The world needs a better Kei than this." She gestured at herself with an expression of disgust.

    "However, I cannot conceive of this better Kei," she said. "To me, this pathetic creature is all I have ever been and all I can ever be. I cannot step into the sunlight on my own. I..." Her voice caught.

    It took her a couple of seconds before she was ready to speak. "I need you, Akane. On that day, everyone else sought, with the best intentions, to uplift me, without ever doubting that it was what I needed. You alone told me you were willing to stay with me, on the edge of my inner Swamp of Death. No matter how much I have pondered the matter, I cannot understand how it was possible for you to say this… but I do understand that if anyone can lead me to the light, it must be someone who starts by my side in the darkness."

    "We'll find a way to do it," Akane said. "I promise.

    "After all," she added with an innocent smile, "with the Power of Youth, nothing is impossible."

    "I have no one to blame but myself," Kei said resignedly, hiding her own smile as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

    -o-​

    "Noburi gives the estate's less superstitious KEI ninja free chakra exchanges when they train in groups," Akane continued her list. "Kei thinks he should charge a commission, but ironically enough, he's the one who argues that building goodwill with the KEI is more important. It's also one of the times when he checks to see if there are any complaints or disputes he can help with, because not everyone's comfortable bothering the man who's so generously providing them with room and board.

    "I do the civilians. I don't have his silver tongue, but I'm commonborn and people know my parents, so they can talk about things that they wouldn't bother the great and mighty Lord Gōketsu with.

    "Kei drops by every few weeks to check our ledgers for errors and write little notes to Gaku in the margins. They have the most incredible fights, but neither of them wants to tell you in case you make them stop.

    "Mari has a little girl come by to talk to her once a week. Kagome makes them sweets.

    "We're people, Hazō. We have our own lives, and we don't depend on you to do everything.

    "For Yuno, coming here was a nightmare. She didn't know anything about anything. She didn't understand our idioms and cultural references, her customs offended people in Leaf, and our customs offended her but she had to pretend they didn't. And while all of that was going on, she wasn't allowed to talk about her home and explain why she was acting the way she did. You didn't think about that, and nobody expected you to, because it's ridiculous to think that one person can take care of everyone.

    "Do you think she's obsessed with killing?"

    "Isn't she?" Hazō asked, still completely off-balance.

    Akane shook her head. "That's what you see when you look at her. It's what everyone sees. But in reality? She just wants approval. And when was the only time people in Isan gave her approval? It was when she was killing chakra beasts for them. The people around her kept telling her, directly or indirectly, that killing was the only thing she was good for. When you think about that enough, a lot of things snap into perspective. She's not crazy. She's not delusional. She's a girl who got brought up as a weapon and not given a chance to learn how to relate to people, or resolve conflicts, or cope with stress, in any of the normal ways. So when she doesn't know what to do, she defaults to the only thing she knows.

    "It took me a long time to understand all this. We trained together, and we went shopping, and we went to the theatre, and we had meaningful conversations while looking up at night sky, and slowly, we built up the kind of bond where I could start to get the things she didn't have the words to tell me. That wasn't me trying to fix her. It wasn't me setting myself the goal of understanding her. It was just me being with someone I care about, and paying attention—the thing that everybody does all the time.

    "These are our lives. Sometimes we help each other with our emotional crises, and sometimes we're just there for each other while we figure them out for ourselves. Sometimes people fight, and somebody else has to mediate. Sometimes they sort it out on their own. I don't know the things that go on in private between other people, and you don't either, and that's OK. You're one of the people that helps others deal with their issues, and there are things only you can do and things that only other people can do, and that's OK too. What isn't OK is thinking that you can solve everything, or that you have to solve everything, or, frankly, that you have been solving everything. Other people have agency. We're not NPCs.

    "That's all I have to say," Akane said. "I still can't forgive you, not until I understand, but that doesn't mean I don't want you to be happy."

    "That's fine," Hazō said, pushing everything Akane had said into a "figure out later" box in his head. "I mean, not fine fine, but I accept that that's how you feel.

    "If you want to me to leave you alone, I'll go, but I do want to consult you about Haru first. Obviously, you can see more clearly on this issue than I can, so how do you think we should handle it?"

    "Well," Akane began, "have you two done the things I told you?"

    "No," Hazō admitted. "I thought I should make things right with you first."

    Akane's expression had lightened slightly while she was talking about the secret lives of the Gōketsu family, but now it darkened again.

    "Hazō, those are urgent! As soon as another ninja tries doing what Haru did and gets positive results, people are going to start killing civilians and it'll be out of our hands! And any families who lost their breadwinners because Haru killed or crippled them are starving now, or doing things they shouldn't in order to survive now! Do you understand what food prices are like for normal people in the middle of a famine? I don't matter; these people do. You've already let them suffer three weeks longer than you should have."

    There was always more to think about. Always. Hazō missing the fact that yakuza were still civilians and entitled to the protection of Uplift was completely separate from missing the fact that their deaths had an impact on other people beyond "hooray, one less criminal in the world". Maybe this was what Ino meant about delegation, and about knowing when to step back so he could do a better job on a smaller number of things. Surely Hazō would have caught this much if he hadn't been juggling so many goals that dealing with Haru became just a footnote.

    Hazō nodded guiltily. "What about Haru specifically? I understand that he needs to be punished, both for his own actions and as a statement to other people. Do you have any thoughts on what would be appropriate?"

    At that, Akane's expression shut down completely. Hazō could no longer tell what she was feeling, except that it wasn't good.

    "The just thing to do," she said quietly, "is to execute him. It's the lawful punishment for killing civilians. It's what happens to all the other ninja convicted of killing civilians, and it's what the Gōketsu have to do to anyone who kills a civilian, or we're even worse than the status quo. It's the closest you can get to balancing out the weight of murder.

    "But I know Haru. I've known him since the Academy. He does bad things sometimes, but he's not an evil person. He's not going beyond the twisted standards he was raised with. That's not an excuse—people are supposed to think for themselves, especially when it comes to something as important as taking a life. But it's not too late for him. We didn't teach him Uplift properly before, but I know that if we give him a second chance, we can make him understand. We can make him someone who protects all civilians. That would be fair.

    "I can't have both 'just' and 'fair', Hazō. It isn't possible. No matter what I say to you, I'll be telling you to do the wrong thing. It... it tears me up inside."

    As Akane closed her eyes, Ino finally abandoned her position as a neutral observer, and came over to hug her. Akane buried her face in Ino's shoulder.

    "I'm sorry," Akane whispered.

    "Akane," Hazō said after a little while, enough for Ino to guide Akane to the sofa and sit down next to her, "I'm not going to make you choose if you don't want to. In the end, I am the clan head. I have to be the one to make the final decision no matter what."

    Akane shook her head. "No. I'm the one who said Haru needed to be punished. It wouldn't be fair for me to back off at the end and leave you to do the hard part alone. I know I'm a terrible person for thinking this way, but I think what we should do is this..."

    -o-​

    That evening, the entirety of the Gōketsu compound's inhabitants were gathered as, once again, their sometimes gentle, sometimes terrifying lord prepared to mete out judgement. The granite platform atop which Hazō had stood to deliver Ikenaga's just desserts still stood in a position of prominence—the MEW was a wonderful thing, but once a non-construct wall was there, it was there. Or at least, Hazō reflected grimly on things to come, that was usually the case.

    Those in the front rows, who could see clearly, were not anxious as they had been the last time Hazō had meted out justice. No, they were horrified. Gōketsu Haru, one of their benefactors and/or overlords, was the one standing below the platform, hands bound behind his back in a fashion more ceremonial than pragmatic—if Haru tried to run or fight back at this stage, he was effectively rejecting Leaf justice, and every ninja present was duty-bound to attack missing-nin on sight. Haru stood upright, in the next best thing to parade rest, refusing to look away from Hazō. The fires of hatred in his eyes almost concealed the pale fear beneath.

    The rest of the Gōketsu stood lined up behind Hazō, excluding Kei and Snowflake but including Akane, who had not spoken to him during today's preparations.

    "People of the Gōketsu," Hazō began. "Time and again, you have heard that we are the clan of Uplift. It is our duty, our privilege, and our quest to leave this world better than we found it. We protect the weak, and treasure human life, no matter its form. And, though we do not hesitate to slay enemies of Leaf when the Will of Fire calls for it, we are not a clan of murderers."

    A wave of stunned mutters swept through the crowd beneath Hazō. Those standing closest to Haru backed away a few steps, even though no one had dared get close to him to begin with.

    "Gōketsu Haru. You have confessed to the unlawful killing of six civilians. The way of Uplift states that the life of a civilian weighs no less than the life of a ninja. In the eyes of the Gōketsu, you are a murderer, and must be punished as a murderer, with execution at my hand."

    The fear and the hatred in Haru's eyes both doubled, but he still stood tall. Somewhere at the back of a crowd, a civilian tried urgently to push through to the front, shouting something unclear. Others held her back, finally dragging her away when she wouldn't stop. Hazō badly wanted to close his eyes.

    "However," Hazō said instead, raising a hand to demand silence. "It is true that, at the time you committed your crimes, the ideals of Uplift had not yet been made clear to all in the clan—something I will correct in the coming days. Perhaps you had legitimate cause not to know the fate that awaits any Gōketsu who takes a civilian life. Thus, I have chosen to spare your life and punish you differently."

    "Lord Gōketsu!" an unexpected cry came from among the civilians.

    Hazō frowned. He hadn't expected any interruptions. He hoped nobody was going to beg for mercy for Haru. A clan head could not be swayed from justice by emotional appeals, but at the same time, explicitly refusing to show mercy in front of everyone was going to earn him personally more fear than he wanted from today's performance, and less respect.

    "What is it, Gōketsu..." Hazō couldn't recognise the civilian behind the thick winter coat and face-obscuring woolen scarf. "What do you have to say that justifies interrupting my judgement?"

    "My Lord," the civilian asked in a baritone that carried well across the estate, "if this man has confessed to murder of civilians, village law says he should be executed. Is Gōketsu law above village law?"

    "Of course not," Hazō said dismissively, while flailing on the inside. Akane had, in the end, chosen to be fair rather than just, and would doubtless be as haunted by that decision as she would have been by the opposite. Now, Hazō had to defend it in some way that did not come across as favouritism, or those in front of him would lose all faith in Gōketsu justice.

    "It may seem to you," Hazō played for time while his brain went into overdrive and the Thing failed to happen despite his prayers, "that there is a contradiction here. I can understand how you might think that. It's only natural at first glance. However..."—no, he had it—"…the letter of the law does not state that a ninja accused of killing a civilian must be executed. It states that the ninja must be presented to the Hokage for judgement, and execution is simply the appropriate punishment for the Hokage to bestow. I have already consulted the Hokage with regard to Haru's case, and while he ordered Haru to stop the killings, which has been done, he did not order Haru's execution. I will not take a life the Hokage himself chose to spare. However, the Gōketsu's standards in regard to harming civilians are more strict than those of the village at large, and so I have decided that Haru must be punished nonetheless."

    "Did the Hokage order you not to execute him?" the insufferable civilian demanded even as an empty circle formed around him in the middle of the crowd. "Did he explicitly say that Gōketsu Haru must be exempt from the proper punishment for the crime he'd confessed to? Did he tell you that, even though you were fine to execute a civilian for rape, you were forbidden to execute a ninja for murder?"

    Hazō reflected ruefully that in a normal, bigoted clan, no civilian would ever dare call their clan head out like this. Many would execute him just because a public challenge to their authority could not be tolerated. Frankly, even within the Gōketsu, the man's behaviour was unnatural. Yes, Hazō would be the worst kind of hypocrite if he punished a man for calling him to account for an apparent injustice. But as a clan head, it was fully within his right to execute his civilians, and the fact that doing so was immoral wouldn't make the civilian any less dead.

    That aside, Hazō could see the trap here. It wasn't like the civilian in the scarf was wrong about anything. The Hokage had ignored the letter of the law because he only cared about practical consequences, just like Hazō had to begin with. Hazō was sparing the life of a man when he'd executed another one for less (Hazō wasn't going to argue, with Mari standing behind him, that raping a child was worse than murder).

    On the one hand, Hazō publicly admitting that the Hokage was unjust, even by implication, would lead to nowhere good as far as his ever-shaky standing with Asuma was concerned. He'd been forced to come too close to that already. On the other hand, if the Hokage was just, yet justice wasn't being done, then Hazō had to be the one responsible for that failure. The assembled Gōketsu would remember that when Hazō next claimed to be fighting for a world better than the status quo.

    She wouldn't forgive him for this. Not even once she got over his original mistake. Hazō felt a wave of utter loathing for the civilian in the scarf. He'd make sure to have the bastard thoroughly investigated later, and if there was a single black spot on the record of the man now trying to undermine Hazō's best attempt at justice…

    "No," Hazō said, carefully, making sure every word was just right. "The Hokage did not give that order. However, I understand and accept his reasoning for not executing Haru. I neglected to explain that the six victims were all yakuza, killed in defence of the clan."

    Some of the gazes directed at Haru turned much more sympathetic. Some of those directed at Hazō, hostile to the same degree.

    "Yakuza," Hazō forced himself to say, "are the scum of the earth. They are predators of the very sort that the law exists to protect honest men and women from. Those six people, between them, must have committed many robberies, murders, acts of blackmail and extortion, and other crimes too vile for me to talk about with women and children present. They must have ruined countless lives. The Hokage, in his wisdom, has recognised that Haru's actions, though in violation of the letter of the law, were performed well within its spirit. We cannot know the number of people whom those actions have protected. We can expect that, over the coming years, many more than six civilians would have been killed if Haru had let those criminals live. When Haru acted, the thought foremost in his mind was that members of the Gōketsu, perhaps some of you listening to this today, would have been among that number.

    "I know this is a grey area. When is it acceptable to violate the letter of the law to pursue its spirit? I don't know the answer to that question, and nor does anyone here. The only one who can is the Hokage, the Will of Fire made flesh, and as a loyal ninja of Hidden Leaf, I have faith in his judgement. The Hokage has chosen to spare Haru's life, and he has recognised my right to decide how that life is to be treated. There will be no more questions.

    "Gōketsu Haru." Hazō shifted his attention, and everyone else's, back to the space in front of the granite platform. "Though your victims may have been the worst of sinners, Uplift does not make exceptions to the sanctity of human life. For abusing your power as a ninja against civilians, I hereby strip you of your ninja status, and demote you to being a civilian until further notice."

    "What?!" Haru exploded, and he wasn't the only one. The clamour was deafening.

    "Silence!" Hazō roared.

    The crowd settled, not immediately, but soon enough. The shock soon transmuted to horrified fascination, and doubtless nobody wanted to miss what the crazy clan lord would say next.

    "Here is your punishment, Haru. You will live in one of the civilian shelters on this estate. You will wash, eat, and sleep with the other civilians. You will not wear the Gōketsu crest. You will not command other civilians. You will labour for the benefit of the Gōketsu as I am about to instruct you. Finally… twice a day, Noburi will drain your chakra to the level of a civilian."

    Haru kept control of himself this time, but at that last line, he looked like those ceremonial ropes were the only thing keeping him from going for Hazō's throat. Hazō couldn't blame him. Well, he could—Haru was the one who'd casually murdered six people—but just imagining the experience of Akane's punishment, of waking up to find you weren't a ninja, sent shivers down his spine.

    But it was necessary. Hazō had agreed with that. He was walking a very fine line by refusing to execute Haru in the same breath as he proclaimed that all lives were equal. Nobody in the estate could have any doubt that if Haru had killed six ninja, he'd be dead already, with no mitigating circumstances accepted. That meant his punishment had to be harsh enough that nobody would question the sincerity of Hazō's anger, or think he was going easy on a clansman. And to a ninja, what could be closer to death than having to live as a civilian, even temporarily?

    "Noburi," Hazō said coldly, "begin the punishment."

    Noburi, his face expressionless, dipped his hand in his barrel, then placed it on Haru's shoulder, letting the water soak into the cloth of Haru's shirt to leave a conduit for the Vampiric Dew.

    Haru's eyes widened. He gritted his teeth.

    Noburi kept his hand in place as, gradually, Haru sank to his knees.

    "Now," Hazō said, reminding himself to stay angry and feel no compassion, "for your labour for the clan. Earth Element: Multiple Earth Wall!"

    A new granite pillar rose from the soil. Haru looked at it in confusion.

    Hazō pulled out a storage scroll and unsealed a heavy sledgehammer.

    "The estate requires a new gravel footpath. You will break down this rock until no fragment is larger than my thumbnail. Unless you have pressing cause, you will not show your face before me until you are done."

    Obviously, neither Hazō nor Akane cared about gravel footpaths except as a way to make the point that, as a civilian, Haru was to perform shameful manual labour, rather than the honourable military tasks of a ninja. But that didn't mean the choice was purely performative. They knew from watching Noburi that a ninja could wield a great deal of physical power even with civilian levels of chakra. That would mean nothing against solid rock, and after a day's back-breaking work, an exhausted Haru would feel as weak as any civilian.

    Hazō was glad beyond words that Akane only ever used her powers for good.

    "Justice has been served," Hazō said to the crowd. "You are dismissed."

    He began the silent, solemn walk back to the main building with the rest of the clan. He did not dare meet Akane's eyes.

    Instead, she met his.

    "It's OK," she said in the even voice of a woman keeping it together through pure force of will. "I couldn't think of a better answer either. I… I need to go, Hazō. I'll be back when I can."

    "Yeah," Hazō said heavily.

    "Wait, one thing," he said before she turned away. "Do you know who the civilian in the scarf was?"

    Akane shrugged. "No idea. Wasn't one of ours. Goodbye, Hazō."

    And that was how the Gōketsu Clan ninja lost their second member.

    -o-
    ​
    You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.

    -o-
    ​
    What do you do?

    Voting closes on Saturday 16th of July, 1 p.m. New York time.
     
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    • Velorien said:
    "Well, two things. The first is that Ino is right about everything. Hazō, if you're hurting, let us help you. Please. I can't stand the thought that you've been suffering in silence because you couldn't trust us to help. Even if you think your problems are too big for us to handle, at least let us try before you give up and go back to sacrificing yourself for the clan."
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    Velorien said:
    And that was how the Gōketsu Clan ninja lost their second member.
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    Faflec's got this bit covered I think
     
    Velorien said:
    "Mari has a little girl come by to talk to her once a week. Kagome makes them sweets.
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    Velorien said:
    "There's no need," Hazō said. His gaze shifted downwards. "Karen, I have something to say to you too."

    The girl continued to watch him warily, but she straightened up a little bit. Briefly, she met his eyes, then urgently looked down again.

    "There's someone at the Gōketsu estate who went through the same thing as you. She's an adult now, and very wise, and she says that if you ever need someone to talk to, her door is always open to you. As your clan head, I promise that you can trust her. Ask for Gōketsu Mari."

    The gesture of vulnerability involved in that, for Mari to bare her greatest trauma to strangers on her own initiative, had staggered him. If this was the shape Mari's personality was going to take as she finally went beyond her "playful manipulator" holding pattern and began to create something new, she was going to become a new kind of power to be reckoned with. Hazō had no words either, not for how proud he was.
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    First they say 'you should delegate more' and then they say 'hey, we're also doing stuff all the time that you don't have the time for or even notice'. :p
     
    Murska said:
    First they say 'you should delegate more' and then they say 'hey, we're also doing stuff all the time that you don't have the time for or even notice'. :p
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    Well yeah, he wasn't going to delegate that stuff to them and they needed to be done, so they did it anyways. If the sphere of what Hazou was aware of was too much to bear, the sphere of what needed to be done would have crushed him.
     
    Velorien said:
    Hazō didn't know what to say. At the end of his fantasy, he'd thrown the clan at the others and gone away to do the things that mattered. If Ino was saying that he could have done that, on a smaller scale, at any time, and the only thing stopping him was lack of trust in his family... that didn't paint Hazō in a light he liked at all.
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    Speaking of delegating, we should delegate Noburi's problem to, well, Noburi. He's been kind of slacking off on being the best husband he can be for Yuno, especially when she's in such a rough spot emotionally.

    So we should give an order to Noburi as clan head: Hey Noburi, you're a husband now. And it's been pointed out a few times that you haven't exactly been doing as well at it as you could. Meanwhile, Yuno is in an extremely rough spot emotionally, and could really use some support. I give you permission to use any clan resources necessary, be it money for dates or Mari/Akane for advice, to make your relationship with Yuno as close and supportive as you can. Take some missions together, go on some dates, take her up to a skytower and watch the sunset. Draw giant hearts in pigs blood for all I care. Just be a good and supportive husband to her and spend some time with her.

    Or, to put it as a plan section:
    • Noburi, fix your relationship with Yuno. Use whatever clan resources you need for dates, etc. Support her emotionally.
     
    TalonofAnathrax said:
    Is that something we can even do?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    In literal terms? It makes about as much sense as demoting a cat to being a mouse. It wouldn't occur to anyone to make laws about it.

    In practical terms? You're Haru's clan head. You can do anything to him unless the Hokage personally objects (although you will have to square it with him if he wants to send Haru on a mission and Haru is too busy being a civilian).
     
    Last edited:
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