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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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We could already be blackmailing him with the Great Seal cuz without Hazou it probably won't get fixed since everyone else is hella dragging their feet on it. But it's an empty threat coz Asuma knows Hazou wouldn't willingly end the world like that under any circumstance really. Similarly, Asuma is hesitant to kill him for the same reason (among many others) so it's easier/better to just make Hazou much more contained instead. Further inconveniences are still a threat, especially since our clanmates share the punishments.
 
Rafin said:
Is it supposed to allow for one more vote before testing?
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No, it is not.

Asuma's concern would be limited to Leaf/Fire citizens, and if he picks the right chunk of ocean we're not worried about that. A tsunami could be seen as an act of war but we're unlikely to be identified as the perpetrator because we just got hit with the same phenomenon.

At best, we might have picked up a few more 'I guess it's hard to safely test weapons of this scale, huh, Mr. Hokage?' points but if it turns into a tsunami we're doing that anyway.
cdeevfrr said:
Now we have to deal with EM proliferation anyway.
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We don't. Asuma is arguably more committed to preventing proliferation than we are: we would simply never wipe Isan off the map while he would probably do so quite happily to reduce the odds that this can spread.

And he's really no more or less willing to use this than we were or are: if we'd had it during the Rock war we'd have deployed it without a second thought, the civilians in Rock be damned.
 
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ASUMA: "You reek of optimism, familial loyalty, and Uplift. Even if you were horribly self-destructive, you won't kill civilization. Your family lives here, and, despite your best efforts, they're not all Summoners. I'll call your bluff."
 
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Inferno Vulpix said:
If I were Asuma trying to deal with the EM leak that Isan represents, how would I go about it?

The way I see it, there are three things to simultaneously optimize for: Understanding the Leak, Plugging the Leak, and Removing the Leak.

Understanding the leak comes down to the following questions:
  • Who in Isan knows Elemental Mastery?
  • Who among Isan's missing-nin knows Elemental Mastery?
  • Have Isan sold Elemental Mastery to any outsiders other than Akane?
The first question can be worked on by sending skytower spies and I&S specialists into the village on the regular, collecting as much information as they can on who in Isan has Fire Element. Every Isanese ninja with Fire Element can be presumed to know Elemental Mastery. The second question can be handled with a simple inquiry during any official meetings, if Leaf does not already know. As before, any Isanese missing-nin with Fire Element can be presumed to know Elemental Mastery. The third question can be similarly handled during regular meetings.

But wait, we can't afford to just ask about EM! That would tip our hand and let them know we care. I'll get back to this in a second.

Plugging the leak is not a hard and fast problem, but a matter of degrees:
  • How can we make Isan less likely to spread EM beyond their village?
  • How can we ensure we know if they do?
  • Hunt down the missing-nin.
There's a simple strategy I can think of to make progress on this goal: Leaf reaches out to Isan, offering a jutsu trade. Among the conditions of the trade is that none of the jutsu we trade to each other are to be shared with any other village. If Leaf gives Isan Flame Aura, Leaf is contractually bound to not sell Flame Aura to anyone else, and vice versa for Isan. Leaf is relatively generous in this deal, staying within the bounds of 'too good to pass up' and 'not too good to be real'. In the process, Leaf conveniently lets Isan play the 'it has a really impressive name' thing that they did with Akane, and gets EM bundled into the deal (the exact jutsu scroll will, somehow, get misplaced in transit). Isan is now contractually bound to not sell EM (among others) to any other nations.

If Leaf then dots its i's and crosses its t's, we have ample pretext to ask after questions like 'have you sold any of these jutsu to other villages?' or 'do any of your missing-nin know these jutsu?' without coming across as suspicious.

Taking care of the missing-nin is more straightforward, though not easy. Once we know who our targets are, Asuma sends out clandestine hunter-nin to find and apprehend them. Ideally they are brought before a Yamanaka who can ensure that the jutsu was never taught to anyone else. If this proves impossible, further resources can be invested in figuring out everyone the missing-nin contacted, and interrogating them in turn, until we are confident that vector of spread is decontaminated.

Removing the leak is the trickiest part. It's not like we can just wipe Isan off the map and call it a day, AMITY would kill Leaf. Instead:
  • Secretly put bounties on Isanese Fire-aspect nin. Attrition rates over time will slowly whittle away at the number of Isan-nin who know Fire Element, and thus EM.
  • Commission a top jutsu hacker to create a superior version of Elemental Mastery. Ideally strictly better in every respect, except lacking the ability to reach extreme temperatures. See that Isan learns this jutsu, and hope that it supplants Elemental Mastery in Isan (which can be confirmed by aforementioned I&S specialists)
Neither of these are likely sufficient to complete the job. We cannot remove all of the Fire-element Isanese ninja without an extremely aggressive campaign against them, and even if we completely phase out EM in day-to-day life it will still exist in the jutsu archives. But what this does is make any masterstrokes in the future that much easier to achieve. If Leaf finds itself politically and militarily in a position to stage some kind of intervention against Isan, marching in and mind-wiping all the Fire-element ninja, merging Isan into Leaf and absorbing all their institutions under the authority of the Hokage, or any other kind of solution that totally eradicates EM from Isan, the above two strategies will make such masterstrokes substantially easier to pull off. In the meantime, sufficiently competent measures at plugging the leak (backed by competent measures at understanding the leak) minimize the odds that EM becomes uncontainable anytime soon.

This is roughly the kind of strategy that I think Asuma will push. He and Shikamaru may come up with more ideas that I haven't thought of, and may elect not to use ideas that I've presented here, but this is the general approach I expect to see. Subterfuge and espionage, deals with fine-print that means little to Isan but much to Asuma, and a careful systematic extermination campaign of all risk vectors, starting with the missing-nin.
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I kind of want to vote this in as an action plan.

But that's way too many words. Good analysis.
 
eaglejarl said:
Blackmailing the Hokage with the threat of civilization's collapse. I see no way this could go wrong
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I... think that every time we tried to blackmail the Hokage, it went well? The Arachnid Scroll, the thing the Gouketsu and Ami pulled off when getting Hazou out of the killbox, Shikamaru's threat to ragequit Leaf if Oro isn't stopped... There was the thing with Naruto, but he got pissy before we actually got to the "blackmail the Hokage" part, and I'm sure it would've went well if he just played along.

Blackmailing the Hokage is actually a great idea that always works! Don't let the loyalists' rhetoric confuse you; just look at the data!
 
Noumero said:
I... think that every time we tried to blackmail the Hokage, it went well? The Arachnid Scroll, the thing the Gouketsu and Ami pulled off when getting Hazou out of the killbox, Shikamaru's threat to ragequit Leaf if Oro isn't stopped... There was the thing with Naruto, but he got pissy before we actually got to the "blackmail the Hokage" part, and I'm sure it would've went well if he just played along.

Blackmailing the Hokage is actually a great idea that always works! Don't let the loyalists' rhetoric confuse you; just look at the data!
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The difference is that Hazou never knowingly blackmailed the Hokage at any point. Everything that happened was either someone else doing the blackmailing, or Hazou not realizing he was blackmailing anyone.
 
Black King said:
I don't think he cares about it as much as we do. Out of sight, out of mind, etc.
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He believed it enough to give us the arachnid scroll despite it being very politically inconvenient, and that was before Hazou brought back the pieces of one that vaporized everything they touched

I do think he cares less than us but it's still on his mind imo, especially since every Leaf summoner but hazou and kagome have summons at the conclave
 
I don't know why, but I want to believe that Asuma moving everyone into the city is not just a cynical need to keep Hazou under closer observation. It's both that and an actual attempt to foster better relations between the clan and the rest of Leaf.
 
AntiSanity said:
I don't know why, but I want to believe that Asuma moving everyone into the city is not just a cynical need to keep Hazou under closer observation. It's both that and an actual attempt to foster better relations between the clan and the rest of Leaf.
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I def think Asuma isn't moving against us. We gave him an incredible weapon and he's already offered us shinies. I think we're projecting our own paranoia that the world is going to be destroyed back at him
 
AntiSanity said:
I don't know why, but I want to believe that Asuma moving everyone into the city is not just a cynical need to keep Hazou under closer observation. It's both that and an actual attempt to foster better relations between the clan and the rest of Leaf.
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IMO Asuma is doing his best to navigate a very difficult situation. Sure, some of this is motivated by a desire to ensure that we don't do stuff like randomly nuke parts of Leaf. But that desire is IMO motivated by not just his desire to keep the stupid Goketsu from being dumb traitors but a genuine desire to mentor us somewhat: he sees a lot of raw potential in us, which is why we've had the leeway we've had, and why we'll probably get more.

The thing that I think raises our collective hackles a little is that he's not being transparent in doing so, but this makes sense: in his mind, he's effectively a father figure to the entire village, clan heads included, and that goes double for junior nin and junior clan heads.

Quite frankly I think we should try to check in with him semi-regularly about clan struggles we're having so he can give us some perspective and so we can build that mentor-mentee rapport, to say nothing of the value of knowing what the Leaf way of doing things is...as well as exposing him to the Goketsu method and its successes relative to the traditional Leaf technique. (e.g., unhappy civilians within the clan, traditional Leaf techniques probably involve some intimidation or ninja heavy-handedness, but if we bring them onside as we're wont to do and can then talk about how well that worked, then he might start to incorporate our approaches more broadly.)
 
Velorien said:
ASUMA: Hmm, traumatised, unstable, and with great power. On the minus side, could nuke Leaf. On the plus side, jōnin track confirmed.
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I mean, yeah, that sounds about right. And hey, she has morals, so she's not Orochimaru with a nuke, at least? Well, Orochimaru probably has some nasty plagues he could unleash, or something, but still...
 
Man, this makes geopolitics so spicy.
Leaf has a superweapon. But it cannot use the threat of the superweapon, really, because the risk of a decapitation strike by combined forces of all other villages is extremely high. They only really get one shot at it, and that's even assuming the Isan situation is resolved with knowledge of EM secured.

Which unfortunately makes a preemptive strike _really appealing_. Fortunately Asuma seems reasonably honourable, and might not have it in him to eliminate all other villages at once, including the supposedly allied ones. Also I suppose execution is rough - though really if all you need is a dedicated ninja with access to the village, using one jutsu.... you can probably just walk in.

The preemptive strike would be less appealing if Leaf could use the threat of EMN as a deterrent. Which leads me to the next thought - what's the MFD equivalent of SSBs? Don't think we can afford to hide EM40 folks around all the world, with the order to execute if Leaf is destroyed. But - can the liquid air be storage sealed? in amounts sufficient that when released all at once it would cause the instant rapid cooling effect of the jutsu, though without the persisted effects? because that feels like an angle


ps. reading only the initial version of chapter 562, and then seeing the notification for 562 part 2 and trying to read that was.... an interesting experience 😅
 
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Anderkent said:
Man, this makes geopolitics so spicy.
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I'm not so sure I agree. We'll have to get Shikamaru's analysis, but let me make my case.
Anderkent said:
Leaf has a superweapon. But it cannot use the threat of the superweapon, really, because the risk of a decapitation strike by combined forces of all other villages is extremely high. They only really get one shot at it, and that's even assuming the Isan situation is resolved with knowledge of EM secured.
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I agree with almost all of this: if word gets out that Leaf has developed a superweapon then the very least we can expect is a pointed visit from the AMITY equivalent of the people that investigate and make sure that various nations aren't developing nukes. I don't know that other nations would be keen to try to erase us, for reasons I'll get into.
Anderkent said:
Which unfortunately makes a preemptive strike _really appealing_. Fortunately Asuma seems reasonably honourable, and might not have it in him to eliminate all other villages at once, including the supposedly allied ones. Also I suppose execution is rough - though really if all you need is a dedicated ninja with access to the village, using one jutsu.... you can probably just walk in.
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Let's say that Asuma suddenly decides that he wants Leaf to rule the world.

I don't think that preemptive strikes actually let him accomplish this.

He could, in theory, right now, have Naruto go worm his way into Cloud and kill himself and the sudden release of the Nine Tails would effectively decimate Cloud. This has a risk and a cost - the cost is, obviously, Naruto's life and his warmaking capacity, but the risk is that (say) Bee is out of Cloud at the time, hears the stories of Leaf's bijuu rampaging through his home, and then follows up immediately by doing the same thing to Leaf. Power is already so distributed in the ninja world that assaulting hard targets is no guarantee that you've actually bought yourself any safety - you might have actually just imperiled yourself. Maybe, maybe, we could get away with this once and avoid blame because no one can tie this back to Leaf like they can the Nine Tails, but the odds of that go down each time we try it, and anything coordinated points the finger squarely at Leaf and ensures that whoever survives - and there will be survivors, probably an Akatsuki or two among them because I don't think they have a single base - is coming for Leaf and might be quite happy to use suicide techniques.

Simultaneously, trying to out-and-out destroy Leaf is now more dangerous than ever. Let's say word of this got out. Who wants to make a move? If you execute, word will get out: you can't anonymously assault a Hidden Village. Word gets to a Leaf nin who was out of town at the time, and if they have Fire element, your village can expect a nasty visit.
Anderkent said:
The preemptive strike would be less appealing if Leaf could use the threat of EMN as a deterrent. Which leads me to the next thought - what's the MFD equivalent of SSBs? Don't think we can afford to hide EM40 folks around all the world, with the order to execute if Leaf is destroyed. But - can the liquid air be storage sealed? in amounts sufficient that when released all at once it would cause the instant rapid cooling effect of the jutsu, though without the persisted effects? because that feels like an angle
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SSBs?

The ninja world achieved detente already. When we've innovated previously, we've introduced novel capabilities. Skytowers - you can station ninja miles in the air, hiding all-but-invisibly! Skywalkers: ninja can fly during combat! Even Skyslicers were pretty big: This isn't that. We've changed the math but not the underlying equations: anyone who has Fire element and SC is a reusable jinchuuriki, but that's a shift within an existing paradigm, not an entirely new one IMO.

Yet, anyway.
 
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