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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
"Interesting point," Noburi said. "Asuma has had me moving chakra around a lot lately, mostly from back-line genin into jōnin who needed to be sent out again, or simply needed a lot of chakra so they could learn an expensive technique quickly. I can make it clear to whomever seems relevant"—he carefully did not specify 'the Hokage'—"that if any member of my family disappears then I stop doing that. No chakra transfers. No summoned wave attacks, no fast recharging, no enhanced training. Nothing. What's Orochimaru going to do, kidnap me?"
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@eaglejarl @Velorien If we ask Noburi for names of the Jonin he worked with, who would they be?
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Potential counter to this idea: while the Tower was unfortunate in that both of its backup locations were hit, if any of the Clans had backup stashes of their critical documentation and scrollery off-site (as you might expect of a primarily-nomadic clan only tentatively signing onto this whole 'Leaf' thing circa 70 years ago) then those stashes would still be intact. Whether any of the clans did this - and if so, which - is not certain, but it means some clans who by this analysis ought to have lost significant continuity of knowledge and jutsu may be surprisingly intact.
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I really hope this is the case. Still, even if these clans had contingencies for the loss of their clan head, entire pool of senior ninja and elders, and the complete destruction of their clan compound, they still lost all of the orally taught ninjutsu.

I can see the Nara being prepared, but I still worry. I really doubt most clans would be comfortable having instructions for their high-level techniques be kept on an off-site (and thus far less secure) location. I'm honestly doubtful that the highest-level techniques would be written down at all, given that this is a village of Hyūga.
 
Can Noburi recognize an ANBU agent from their chakra reserves if he refills them both in and out of mask? If so, we may know the identities all of the ANBU jōnin from that and process of elimination. We should talk to Asuma about this. I'm sure there is procedures for this, considering the Hyūga can see through walls. (Unless the masks and clothing of ANBU all contain AB seals that are permanently active AND the ANBU take steps to ensure that the Hyūga are not perpetually tracking the moves of all jōnin like I would be).
 
_The_Bomb said:
Can Noburi recognize an ANBU agent from their chakra reserves if he refills them both in and out of mask? If so, we may know the identities all of the ANBU jōnin from that and process of elimination. We should talk to Asuma about this. I'm sure there is procedures for this, considering the Hyūga can see through walls. (Unless the masks and clothing of ANBU all contain AB seals that are permanently active AND the ANBU take steps to ensure that the Hyūga are not perpetually tracking the moves of all jōnin like I would be).
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I don't see how this is our problems.
 
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Chapter 483: Wisdom is Knowledge Gained Too Late
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    • January 29, 1070 AS

    Something shifted above, large enough that Hazō could feel the vibrations through fifteen feet of sandstone. He deactivated the Tunneler's Friend seal that was his only source of air and froze in place, doing everything he could to become one with the stone through which he swam. There were at most thirty seconds left on his Hiding Like a Mole jutsu, but he was taking no chances of being n.ticed b\| what was uP there and the r3membeeered feel of Akane's heartbeat p0unded in his mind as he struggled to bring up the scent of h3r hair and use it as a shield for his mind and soul.

    The Dr—the source of the noise settled down. Hazō held his breath for a slow count of ten but then could wait no longer. He ducked back to the tunnel, emerging from the rock before his jutsu ended. With the way the Great Seal distorted chakra effects around itself, Hazō was taking no chances on being trapped inside the stone.

    Besides, he had what he needed. For days now, he had pored over the image of the Great Seal that he held stored in the Iron Nerve. He had traced its every curve, reviewed the angles and twists and thicknesses, all in a desperate attempt to seize the key insight that would let him understand what was going wrong and how to fix it. Yesterday's meditations had brought a hint of terror to the back of his mind, leaving him no choice but to return to the Seventh Path and once more infiltrate the butte atop which rested one of the Sage's greatest works. He had swum through the mundanity of the sandstone, running his hands slowly and carefully along the smooth and unfamiliar mineral that comprised the Seal.

    As he had feared: There were tiny cracks all through the bottom.

    o-o-o-o​

    January 30, 1070 AS

    Cannai raised his massive head as Hazō hobbled up. The Alpha Dog was lounging on the grass in the territory of the Slow River pack, having moved on from Grassy Hills a few days ago. His easygoing mien vanished the moment Hazō appeared alongside Canzone, the six-month-old mastiff who had boosted Hazō up to the Seventh Path.

    "Cannai? Do you have a minute?" Hazō asked as Canzone lolloped away, eager to pester the Slow River bard for a singing lesson.

    Cannai nodded expectantly but said nothing, which made Hazō suddenly nervous. Cannai was usually much more engaging.

    "You remember how, a few weeks ago, I was asking you about sending a dog to the embassy in Pangolin territory so they could participate in the Conclave?"




    "...so, anyway, having a dog at the embassy with all the other clans would have a lot of advantages," Hazō finished.

    Cannai ruminated on that for a moment before responding. "How so? This trade network you have spoken of...we can participate in that as things currently are, since the goods are physically exchanged on the Human Path. Likewise, if I wish to have a diplomat meet with a Pangolin diplomat, they can do so on the Human Path. It seems to me that Dog having a presence at the Conclave is useful to you since it would allow you to meet other Leaf summoners on the Seventh Path while you were in different locations on the Human Path. I'm unclear what advantage Dog would get out of it." He paused, then hastened to add. "Not that this is inherently a bad thing. Partnerships must be valuable to all parties, but that does not mean that every specific aspect must be useful to both sides. I am not entirely adverse to doing things that are of benefit to you and not us, provided that we gain enough value elsewhere. Still—"

    "So you're in?" Hazō asked, excited.

    Cannai cleared his throat meaningfully. "As I was about to say: Dogs are a social clan who live close to the land. You are asking that one or perhaps a pawful should travel hundred or thousands of miles through enemy territories, across a mountain range, to live amidst a warlike and xenophobic species who have recently been on a conquest spree. Those dogs would be away from our lands, eating unfamiliar foods, and away from their packmates for months or even years. I would never order something so cruel." He cocked his head as a thought struck. "Speaking of the pangolins, that group on our eastern border reached out yesterday. Pandā, your sister's summon? He said to remind you that, quote, Kei's commitment ceremony is coming up soon and Hazō better not forget or I'll thwap him, oh, but he shouldn't tell her that I told him because otherwise he won't get the credit for remembering and I've got his back. Unquote." He snorted. "He sounded like a charming young man."

    Hazō laughed. "He really is. The first time we met him was hilarious. See, he fancied that he understood something about human sexual mores and familial bonding, so he said..."




    "I do indeed remember that," Cannai said calmly. "Why do you mention it?"

    "Well, you said that you wouldn't order any dog to go serve as diplomat. We got distracted onto a new subject, but later on I started thinking that there are always outliers in any group, and maybe there might be some dogs with wanderlust who would be interested in seeing new sights. I started asking around, but last night we were talking over family dinner..."




    "I'm starting to think the dogs are a lot more settled than I thought they were," Hazō said, passing the mashed potatoes to Akane so that she could pass them on to Yuno. "They live out on these giant prairies, hunting migratory herds of bison as well as the local small animals. Under those conditions I would have expected a lot more of them to have itchy feet, to want to see what's over the next hill."

    "Thank you," Yuno said to Akane, taking the potatoes and serving herself. "Do you find that they are not?" she asked Hazō.

    "Not really. I've been asking around, trying to see if anyone would be interested in going over to the embassy in Pangolin lands. It seems like it would be an exciting adventure, right? I mean, yes, Cannai made good points about how it's a long ways off and away from family, but there's are a lot of dogs. Some of them should be outliers, right? Or maybe even an entire pack wants to go? Instead—"

    "Hang on," Mari said, a note of insufficiently-hidden alarm in her voice. "It sounds like you're saying that Cannai didn't want to send anyone to Pangolin but you're trying to send someone to Pangolin. Are you?"

    Hazō shook his head. "Not without his permission, no. He said that he wouldn't order anyone to go but he didn't say that he would stop someone from going if they wanted to. I figured I'd ask around, see if anyone was interested. If not, no harm done. If so then everyone wins—the dog or dogs in question get an exciting adventure and Dog gets a representative at the Conclave."

    The noise level in the room plummeted as Mari, Akane, and Noburi all stopped eating to stare at Hazō. Kagome-sensei stopped eating so that he could grab an explosive and look around wide-eyed to figure out what had everyone else so alarmed. Yuno simply looked confused.

    "Hazō," Mari said carefully. "As far as sending representatives to the Conclave, there are, in theory, three possibilities: Cannai wants it to happen, he wants it to not happen, or he is ambivalent. In practice, he's either ambivalent or opposed, since if he wanted it to happen then he would be doing the asking around himself. If he's opposed and you're asking around then he's going to be furious that you're preempting his authority. If he's ambivalent then he's still going to care very much about who the representative is. None of the eastern clans have ever seen a dog before, probably. Whoever goes to the Conclave is going to be defining Dog's reputation with all of those clans and setting their expectations for decades or centuries. If the representative isn't careful then they could leak important Dog secrets—I have no idea what, but there must be some. Also, if they say the wrong thing, they could potentially start a war. Have you asked Cannai what he wants in a diplomat?"

    "Well, no. I figured I'd find someone as a proof of concept that some dogs actually are interested. Once we knew that there was at least one such person then Cannai could organize a better search. If there is no such person then I won't have wasted his time."

    "So you're setting this random dog up for disappointment?" Noburi asked. "Getting them excited about the idea of going, but then Cannai doesn't let them go? That sounds rough on the dog and annoying for Cannai to have to be the bad guy."

    "I mean...they could always go as a bodyguard, right? Or an embassy aide. Or just as company for the diplomatic corps."

    "Hazō," Mari said, "this is high-level geopolitics and you should not be putting your oar in without getting the local ruler's sign-off. Remember what happened when you sent a letter to Itachi without talking to the Hokage?"

    "Hey, I ran that idea past all of you and Kei. None of you objected."

    "Dude," Noburi said, disappointment and irritation dripping from his words. "Yeah, we dropped the ball, but you're the one who threw it. Let's try not to repeat our catastrophic errors, eh?"

    "Oh, fine," Hazō said, rolling his eyes. "I'll talk to Cannai about it. Honestly, I can't see it being that big a deal. I'm not going to send anyone anywhere, I'm not going to involve any other clans. All I'm doing is asking dogs if they would like to travel. How is that a bad thing?"




    "Your relatives sound quite perceptive," Cannai said calmly, once Hazō had finished retelling the key points of the conversation. "I am surprised that you waited so long to talk to them."

    "What?"

    "You have been 'asking around', as you put it, for several weeks now. Yes?"

    "Uh..." Some part of his subconscious finally twigged to Cannai's tone. It was calm and even, just like always, but the trace of subtle humor and liveliness that usually hid beneath the surface was absent. Hazō's brain insisted on very briefly flirting with the idea of dissembling, but fortunately the idea was nigh-instantly rejected.

    "Yes sir."

    "Hmm...Hazō, you have been a good Summoner thus far. Your sleds are very helpful and you were willing to escort Canabisu's team all the way to Arachnid with essentially no notice. You are polite, intelligent, and I have enjoyed our conversations. I have therefore been confused as to why you were defying my orders."

    "Sir?" The grass around them was moving slightly, and not in the direction of the wind. Was Hazō imagining a faint heat shimmer in the air?

    "I told you no, Hazō. I was very clear about not sending a dog to Pangolin territory. Why you would hear those words, obviously understand them, and then sneak around behind my back to defy me on something that so clearly had not a hope...I couldn't understand what you thought to gain.

    "Now I see that it was stupidity, not malice." He paused, then shook his massive head. "Perhaps 'stupid' is unfair. You are intelligent, so this was not due to stupidity. This was simply you being oblivious, pathologically unaware, and arrogant."

    A trace of heat was creeping into the Alpha Dog's words. "I am the Alpha here, Hazō. I am responsible for the safety and well-being of every dog in existence. I decide if and when and where and how we fight, what treaties we make, and how our herds are managed and our lands preserved. You are an outsider with almost no knowledge of our culture, barely more than a child yourself. I rule over a Clan of tens of thousands and have done so for centuries. You, according to your own words, are lurching along on the edge of disaster as you learn how to manage a paltry few hundred. The idea that you—"

    Cannai's voice had been rising as he spoke, the heat shimmer in the air getting more and more intense. He broke off in midsentence and took a breath; the air went back to normal and the grass stopped rustling. When he resumed, his voice was calm again.

    "I am glad to see that this was an issue of misunderstanding on your part, and not an explicit defiance of my authority. Violating pack hierarchy the way you appeared to be doing is not acceptable. I have held my paw this long simply because your actions seemed utterly bizarre and I wanted to find out what you were thinking.

    "You do not understand my people yet, Hazō. Do not think that you know them better than I, and do not ever think to defy my orders or preempt my authority. Do you understand?"

    Cannai had hauled in his anger enough that the world around him was not actively altering itself in reflection of his mood, but Hazō could still feel the expanse of the prairie stretching out for endless leagues around him in a silent statement of how tiny he was. In contrast, Cannai seemed to loom, higher and higher. He had not changed size at all, yet it simultaneously felt as though his head was scraping the clouds.

    All Hazō could do was nod furiously. "Yes sir. I understand. I wasn't trying to do that. I just thought—"

    "You already explained yourself," Cannai reminded him. "I do not need to hear it again. It was a mistake, nothing more. It is forgiven."

    Hazō let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

    "However," Cannai said, causing Hazō's breath to catch again, "the fact that this happened demonstrates that you have an arrogance and essential disrespect that I am not willing to accept from a Summoner. Perhaps a bit of running through the dusty hills of Hyena will help sand off some of those rough edges. I recognize that you have obligations on the Human Path, so I will not insist that it be continuous...five hours per day should be enough. I will assign you to one of the punishment squads."

    Hazō blanched. "Um...sir?" He raised his cane in mute entreaty.

    "Yes, I'm aware that you aren't capable of long-distance running at the moment. That aspect of your discipline training can wait until you are healed. Until then, why don't you do pushups until I get tired? Silently, if you please."

    With a carefully-smothered sigh, Hazō dropped down into front leaning rest position and started hammering out pushups.

    o-o-o-o​

    February 11, 1070 AS

    "—and so he ran down the street after me, buck naked and screaming 'Bring back my forks!'" Mari said, concluding her ten-minute recitation of her latest successful intelligence-gathering mission into Cloud. The table broke up in laughter.

    "Your venture appears to have been far more enjoyable than ours," Akane said, smiling in a way that did not show any of the pain she must be feeling from her right arm, which was immobilized across her chest while it healed. The smile looked grotesque under the massive shiner that had swollen her right eye closed; the medics had been working on it and the healing was accelerated, so it was in its full yellow-and-green glory after only 24 hours. "You escaped with military intelligence and top-quality brandy—"

    "And a pair of solid-gold heirloom serving forks," Mari noted, smiling.

    "—and a pair of solid-gold heirloom serving forks," Akane acknowledged, "whereas Yuno and I...well."

    "Oh?" Hazō asked. "What happened? I thought you guys were doing great."

    "The previous two missions were nothing," Yuno said. She stroked Satsuko's hilt, because of course the axe was leaning against her chair in easy reach. "Boring patrols. The three of us work well together. This one..." Her eyes drifted off into memory.

    "We ran into a Cloud jōnin in the northeast corner of Fire," Akane explained. She shifted slightly and then bit her lip to keep from crying out as her arm almost visibly stabbed pain through her.

    "Bad?" Mari asked.

    Akane nodded. "It was so close. If Yuno hadn't been there..."

    "And Satsuko! We would have been lost without Satsuko."

    "Surely true," Noburi said. "Thank you, Satsuko, for looking after my wife and my sister. Sis, wife: Thanks for looking out for each other and for Satsuko."

    Yuno looked at him strangely. "Did you address me simply as 'wife'?"

    "Uh...look, honey, I was just being funny. I didn't mean to— I mean—"

    "What happened?" Mari asked, mercifully diverting Yuno's attention. "There was a jōnin?"

    "Yes," Akane said. "We saw smoke half a day out and went in at a run to find this Cloud ninja scorching a village called Tall Sky. Maybe a hundred people, and most of them were dead by the time we got there. Most of the houses were on fire, there were bodies and blood everywhere. She was trying to draw us in."

    "You specifically," Mari asked sharply, "or Leaf nin in general?"

    Akane looked over to Yuno; the other girl shrugged. "I don't know," Akane said. "Presumably Leaf nin in general. I don't know how they could have known we would be nearby."

    Mari nodded and gestured for her to continue.

    "Anyway, she had tortured and maimed some of the residents, then dragged them off to the side and left them there, screaming. When we arrived she was kneeling down, emplacing explosives against a house. She wore the flash on her flak jacket that Cloud uses for those of jōnin rank and she was operating alone so we took it to be accurate. There was smoke everywhere and we tried to sneak in close enough to ambush her."

    "She must have noticed me," Yuno admitted, embarrassed. "I didn't think she had, but she must have. She drew her sword and went inside to kill the family, so I went after her. When I arrived—"

    "By which she means 'when she smashed through the wall, Satsuko upraised," Akane said with a smile.

    "—when I arrived, she was there with a trap." She looked down. "I walked straight into it."

    "Yes, but it didn't hit you," Akane reminded, nudging her patrol partner. "You dodged it." She looked around the table. "She dodged actual lightning. It was amazing. There was a seal on the woman's belt, and it was throwing lightning everywhere, and Yuno slid across the floor under all of it and practically chopped this woman's leg off with the most youthful strike I've ever seen!"

    "She stabbed me, Akane. She kicked Satsuko's throat to stop her motion and then struck back with her...thing. Whatever it was."

    "Chakram. I asked at the desk." She turned back to the family. "It's this metal ring with a crossbar that you grip it by. The desk chūnin told me that they are an antique weapon used mostly in Rock, but hers was different. They are usually metal throwing weapons, but she used hers for melee combat. It was throwing tiny lightning bolts everywhere, and it had a rope of lightning that she used to snap it back and forth."

    "She lashed it into my knee," Yuno admitted. "Had I not been using the pangolin jutsu it would have been bad."

    Akane made a disparaging noise. "Hardly! Yuno was so youthfully fast and flexible, she would certainly have escaped with barely a scorch mark!" Her face fell. "I...was not nearly so youthful. I must work harder!"

    "What happened?" Hazō asked, reminding his imagination that it could shut up now because Akane was here and she was fine, it was just a minor injury and she'd be better in a week-ish, so please stop parading images of her dead, burned body around in front of his eyes.

    Akane looked away, shamefaced. "I entered the building behind Yuno and walked straight into the lightning trap. It burned me and suddenly my muscles were not working properly."

    "I did not notice any impairment," Yuno said, smiling. She looked around the table. "She screamed 'YOOOUUUUTTHHHH!' and then exploded into flames and light and sound and flew across the room like a kami! It was amazing."

    "If I had hit, certainly," Akane said, not letting her teammate dress it up. "I promise you all, I did my very best. I used the strongest Flame Aura I could manage, and the Mythological Beast That Is Really Strong And Tough, and the Banshee seals, and my narrow-angle blast rings—" She glanced over at Kagome-sensei. "I couldn't use the wide-angle ones without hurting Yuno." Kagome accepted that with a grumble and Akane continued. "I used all of that, and the Strobelight seal, and even my Rocket Boots."

    "What happened?" Noburi asked, eyes shining like a child at bedtime story hour.

    Akane grimaced. "She stepped effortlessly aside, wrapped the whip of her chakram around me, and slammed me into the floor. It dislocated my shoulder, micro-fractured my arm, and bruised my face. Fortunately, she realized that Yuno was the real threat so she didn't take the time to finish me."

    "Akane, do not denigrate yourself like that. I...have simply had more time to train than you have?"

    Akane smiled and nodded. "It's all right, Yuno. I know there will always be people better than me and I don't mind that you're one of them."

    Yuno seemed very uncomfortable all of a sudden. "I would not have been nearly so successful were it not for your flame jets." She looked over at Hazō. "The jōnin turned to attack me but Akane signaled me to go left and then she threw jets of fire from her Aura, forcing the woman to dodge, exactly into where I was already attacking."

    "You nearly chopped her arm off, and the unyouthful coward fled!"

    "It was barely a scratch, Akane. I put everything I had into that attack and it was not even disabling. It was her own technique that injured her to the point that she fled—I could see the lightning burning her hands and forearms."

    "Bah!" Akane said, waving her un-immobilized hand dramatically. "No matter what, our Youth would have conquered all! Indeed, it did conquer all, for did she not flee before our might, fail to escape, and then fall to Satsuko's edge?! What is this if not the power of Youth?!" She struck a heroic pose that mirrored that of the Senju Hashirama statue from the corner of Senju Court and Namikaze Way.

    The table burst out in applause; Hazō could not help noticing that Haru's was forced.

    "Sounds like an exciting time," Hazō said, smiling for his girlfriend. "Haru, what about you? You've been back two days and I am just now realizing I haven't heard about your mission."

    Haru looked down at his soup and shrugged one shoulder. "I lived. Wasn't as cool as those two, though."

    "C'mon, bro," Noburi said. "Share with the class, Mr Gōketsu."

    Haru shot him a glare. "My partner died, okay? I don't really want to talk about it."

    "Haru, please tell us?" Mari asked. "Not all injuries are physical, honey. Telling us can help."

    Haru sighed, but he put his spoon down. "I was teamed up with a KEI guy named Matsumura Haru, okay? Nice guy. He was joking that we should make an all-Haru squad with his friend Chisaka Haru. He...he asked me a lot about what it's like being in a clan now." He cleared his throat and continued. "Anyway, we were up in Rock on a search and destroy. Basically, go from here to here"—he sketched an arc across the table with his finger—"and kill everyone you meet. Burn the farms, poison the wells. Cause as much damage as you can." His lips twisted. "Apparently, it's all about 'breaking the enemy's will to fight' and that means killing as many civilians as possible."

    Every eye was wide and the entire room was silent except for Kagome-sensei's mostly-too-quiet-to-understand muttering that occasionally involved the word 'stinker'.

    "I'm sorry, Haru," Mari said, resting a hand on his arm. "You shouldn't have had to do that."

    He shrugged one shoulder, not raising his eyes from the bowl of soup that he had wrapped his hands around as though for warmth. "Anyway, we're done with the mission and heading home, crossing from Rock into Grass, and we get jumped by a three-man squad. They were hiding in a bunker and we didn't notice it until we were basically on top of it. They come boiling out and the first one shoots a jutsu into the air that makes bright lights and noise, which says that there's going to be reinforcements on top of us in no time, so we booked it.

    "It was absolute hell. There's explosions everywhere, and this giant fanged maw made out of black energy keeps almost catching us. I just barely stayed ahead of it all...I've got bruises all over my back from a scatter of gravel coming from one of the blasts behind me, and my uniform shirt is ripped up and it keeps flapping around, catching the air and slowing me down. Matsumura got tagged by the edge of something and spun around, but he kept running. We can hear the reinforcements coming, maybe half a minute out, maybe less. We get to this gorge..." He stopped.

    "Haru?" Mari asks. "It's okay, honey."

    Haru clears his throat and shakes his head. "I used my Rocket Books to jump over the gorge, because I forgot that Matsumura didn't have them. He needed to do it the slow way: go down into the gorge, then back up on the other side." He cleared his throat again. "I remembered that he didn't have them about half a second after it was too late. I was already in midair, no way to stop, and I looked down to see what was happening. The kunai went right into his spine, probably would have killed him all by itself. Then the explosive went off and he was just chunks, everywhere."

    "I'm sorry, bro," Noburi said gently. "Life sucks. Matsumura should have been able to grow up and get married and raise a bunch of fat little kids with big red cheeks."

    Haru snorted. "Yeah, well, he didn't. Anyway, then I put my skywalkers in and got out of there. The end."

    He stood up. "I'm not that hungry. I'm going to bed. G'night."

    He turned and left. It was a long minute before conversation resumed, and the tones were far more subdued.




    Author's Notes: Hazō has been reporting to the Seventh Path every day in order to perform five hours of intense calisthenics under Cando, a grizzled old mutt who serves as a trainer for young puppies who want to become warriors. At Cannai's suggestion he has been giving you special, and disturbingly gleeful, attention. All of the exercises are designed to work around Hazō's injuries but no less intense. At the end of every session Hazō is exhausted, shaking, vaguely nauseous, and so sore he can barely hobble even with his cane. He is almost past needing the cane, at which point he will graduate from Cando's gentle paws to become the junior man on a three-dog punishment squad consisting of Hazō, a dog being punished, and a respected fighter who is along to supervise and make sure that both of you get the lesson about not violating cultural norms pounded into your heads. The squad will be running along the Dog/Hyena border all day every day. Fortunately, Hazō is only required to be there for five hours each day. You'll be on this detail until Cannai says you're done and you should expect it to be a few weeks.

    You're going to need to do some time management because you don't have time to train Harumitsu, train Kagome-sensei, manage the clan, do 5 hours of exhausting exercise each day, run the clan, take care of normal food/hygiene/biology, and also sleep. Figure out which of those things you want to give up on.

    You celebrated the skyslider team, you suggested waterproofing methods to them, you notified Asuma of their capabilities, and I'm not clear on what the "Train Akane and any others on Team Uplift to use them from skytowers â using Shadow Clones for safety?.[sic]" line was supposed to mean (ask for information? actually do the training? with everyone or only Shadow Clones?) so you didn't do that.

    This plan was way too big. I count eight scenes:
    1. Meet with Cantelope + Cantilever
    2. Meet with Cannai
    3. Celebrate Akane's birthday, which counts as 3 scenes because we've repeatedly said that birthdays are an update unto themselves
    4. Celebrate Akane's birthday, which counts as 3 scenes because we've repeatedly said that birthdays are an update unto themselves
    5. Celebrate Akane's birthday, which counts as 3 scenes because we've repeatedly said that birthdays are an update unto themselves
    6. Give the skyslider team a bonus and talk about waterproofing
    7. Train the family on flying the skysliders
    8. Talk to Asuma


    Other than being way too big it was a decent plan; the individual pieces of it were well written and clear (except for that training one mentioned above) and you did a great job picking things that I would have enjoyed writing.

    XP AWARD: 3

    Brevity XP: 1

    "GM had fun" XP: -5
    • -5 (As I've said before, every scene over 3 is -1 XP)


    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, December 15, 2021, at 12pm London time.
     
    Last edited:
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    • meep!

    EDIT: I beat Faflec even with that stupid "Your message is short and may not add anything. Are you sure you want to post it?"
     
    Most people go their entire lives without committing treason, and most people who commit treason die soon after it is revealed. What I'm saying is maybe this is our talent. What can we sacrifice to be sure keep that? Would that give us a jōnin aura?
     
    Oneiros said:
    No because literally every other summoner was able to send an emissary to pangolin territory. Cannai is frankly being an ass and we should call him out on it.
    Click to expand...
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    Oneiros, you need to understand the power dynamics here. We are a beggar up against a god. Cannai can demand whatever he wishes of us and we really can't argue with it. He's perfectly within his rights to be pissed at us. And frankly is probably correct to be angry at us for trying this shit. If we wanted to do it we should have cleared it with him first. We didn't.
     
    Oneiros said:
    No because literally every other summoner was able to send an emissary to pangolin territory. Cannai is frankly being an ass and we should call him out on it.
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    The optimised survival plan probably includes assuming the other summoners either have different agreements with their respective summon clans, or got the green light from the Bosses thereof.
    So what I'm saying is: call him out on it when we're SS rank (No.)
     
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    For the record: I really enjoyed this update! (Didn't love the consequences of it of course :p)

    Cantilever is very cute, as is her interactions with Hazou and Cantelope. It's pretty sad that they're being kept apart after their mistake, hope they can earn redemption at some point.

    Family dinner section was cute too. Akane and Yuno are good buddies and chakrams are cool weapons. I feel real bad for Haru too...
     
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