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Aren't Kei/Ami/Naruto in charge of the KEI anyways? Like who is making this decision
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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
I think the official adoption scene would be as interesting to me as having more updates that are meetings about meetings about meetings. Honoka is a nice kid, and we'll adopt her eventually, but I'm not excited about it. It's just a checkbox.
There will be narrative consequences for this decision, like Kagome not doing any new seal research for 3 months. Or Akane being unable to FOOM for the same duration.
That is not something we should do on a whim, and it appears that is literally your justification as to why we should do this in the first place.
I also think that this will build resentment and make attracting additional ninja to the Goketsu more difficult.
I don't see why those two things are hugely advantageous precedent to set. You're going to need to spell it out.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Why would Akane be unable to foom for six months...? This keeps her in the village.
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Asuma wants to keep her in the village anyways. This is one possible method for him to excuse it, but it's far from the only one. For example, teaching Akane Summoning keeps her around for 3 months by itself.
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
[] Protoplan: Hazo's a (Mr.) Beast
- Kei/Shikamaru
- What's the best way for Goketsu to help reduce Genin mortality?
- How much would each of the following help Genin survive the earlier years that tends to kill them off? Would any of these make a significant difference?
- A single storage seal, possibly with some cheap but vital equipment already inside (bandages, small amount of medical alcohol?)
- A single explosive seal
- A single high level (DRM protected?) goo bomb seal?
- Spider silk bandages?
- Any other unique resource we have access?
- How would each genin having a storage seal affect Leaf's logistics and war making capacity?
- Mari
- How much would giving every genin in leaf the kit from above affect Goketsu PR?
- How could we politically leverage this to further Uplift?
- Asuma
- Hazo and the Goketsu clan would like to make a personal gift of seals/other items to help genin in Leaf survive. Would he allow this?
- If it looks doable, take a few days (and possibly pull in other Goketsu seal masters) and make/distribute the seals/kit (using SC to increase production). Then distribute it with the help of the tower.
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Ami and Naruto are laughing their asses off wondering when Hazō is finally going to figure it out, Kei is relishing her revenge for Hazō's many transgressions.Aren't Kei/Ami/Naruto in charge of the KEI anyways? Like who is making this decision
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"Hahaha just wait until he storms in here to- wait is he actually agreeing to do it? WHAT?!"
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Please don't push the people who have clearly Had Enough of our shit.
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? We've done nothing but support the KEI at pretty much every opportunity. What shit have they had enough of?
Threnodist
occupying Haudenosaunee & Osage land she/her/hers
- Location
- Pittsburgh
Speaking of Akane, I wander if she and Naruto can find some common ground on being walking WMDs.
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Kindly read the post again, and try to pick up the tone. They won't give us any tickets except specifically for Honoka (likely because they know she's important to Kagome as a student). The appropriate response here is 'that was nice of them to make an exception to a political policy for compassionate reasons, we should do something nice in turn' not 'they're letting us adopt an academy student but not adult ninja, push them to give more tickets to adopt more academy students to get around refusal to give tickets for adult ninja'.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
We hypothesized for a time that you might be able to adopt academy students without a ticket, and I think Hazou raised the question in-story at some point, but the answer was pretty firm: adopting any chakra-capable person, no matter how young, would require a ticket.
Entirely separately, nobody's tried to do that yet (since adoptions are generally reserved for ninja with a strong proven track record who demonstrably bring value to the clan) so there's no hard precedent to say that it is or isn't allowed. There's no real reason why it wouldn't be allowed, especially since you can't adopt them the normal way, but until that hard precedent exists it's an open question in some respects.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Tone doesn't transfer well in text. I'd appreciate it if you'd afford the other people in this thread the benefit of the doubt. People disagreeing with your interpretations of events doesn't mean that they are attacking you personally.
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Anyone in Leaf: Not the Gōketsu... I've had enough of your shit...
Random Gōketsu: what do you mean?
Anyone in Leaf: *gestures vaguely in the direction of Hazō*
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- Book Fort
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FWIW, we don't know if this is true in MfD as it is IRL. The existence of chakra may make things wonky.
They're not giving ANYONE adoption tickets right now, not just the Goketsu. They're not targeting the Goketsu, specifically. This isn't a reaction to anything we've done, this is their general policy at the moment.
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I know you're just joking but like, the KEI explicitly forced themselves into existence to the chagrin of the establishment (sound familiar?) and a notable part of their success was support from the Goketsu. They're about the only bloc who Hazou hasn't tried to buck the reins of - quite the opposite.
Xilentxium
Existential Crisis Management
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- Temperate Regions
The Hazoucule will grow, regardless of Hazou's knowledge or consent
- Location
- USA
Thank you both for the reaction posts, always appreciated. Take +1 XP apiece, to a PC of your choice.
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Oh, thank you! I think Noburi gets it
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- UK
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Kagome taught four clanless ninja sealing: Fuyuki Kazushi, Jinno Yūdai, Sugiyama Shinji, and Genda Jitsuku. Of them, the first three joined Gōketsu and the last is now perhaps angling for the same.
HDK about the details of KEI decision-making. For all he knows, the coordinators did make this decision and think it was generous/unavoidable/significantly better for the KEI.
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- The Void
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We're just a few month out of Hazō entering detour one and was wondering if there was some consensus on what we want to do with his build since we'll finally have more freedom on what we can do. I see a few things that might be priorities. We could focus on getting his combat stats up. Keep focusing on sealing and calligraphy. Go all in on CR to get more powerful summons to support us. Or try to focus on socials. I'm sure I could be missing some other options but would love to hear what people are leaning towards
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I've already shared this a few times:
hazou x9 samples 2
Detour 1 ,,12137 Gōketsu Hazō,Male,<a href="https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/marked-for-death-a-rational-naruto-quest.24481/page-3147#post-10096392">Aspects</a>,Physical Consequences,Game Date Expires,FP Award Post,Fate Points,Notes,XP Award Post,XP Unspent XP,-803,Creative Idea...
Basically just finally do what Mari keeps asking Hazou to do lmao
With combat skills at x9 and socials too I'm fine with pursuing whatever afterwards, but I feel pretty strongly about getting those. We're seeing that Hazou can't really get away with not using those skills anymore and that problem will only get worse with time.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The biggest question, imo, is Earthshaping. If ES 50 unlocks 3D Sealing for us then we'll finally know how it works and be able to adjust our plans accordingly. If it looks like a strong path to power in its own right, given our high Sealing and high ES, it might be worth focusing on the Sealing side of our build even more just to squeeze every last advantage out of the new paradigm.
Of course, as Shrooms just said, we need to push our socials and basic combat stats at least a little. It's a chronic weakness: punching up as much as we are is hard enough without having to dance around any and all serious combat in the process. The more raw power Hazou has, the more options he has in any given scenario.
CR is, I think, not ideal right now. Our biggest plotline right now is in the Seventh Path and by contrast the Human Path is actually pretty chill, so more CR doesn't actually pay off with higher combat effectiveness yet. Of course, circumstances will change and we'll find ourselves fighting Human Path battles again soon enough, but given the current circumstances I'm comfortable leaving CR for a bit later.
And the baseline everything else gets compared against is "simply do more Sealing". After all, we still have a way-too-long backlog of interesting and useful projects, and some really cool projects that some more levels might bring into our grasp. And that doesn't even touch on the Minato seals, which sound like they open up all sorts of powerful shinies in their own right.
Chapter 585: The Warmth of Bonds, the Cold of Winter
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- UK
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Booking out entire restaurants was just matter of course now to the man who'd rarely been able to set foot inside one for the first thirteen years of his life (and spent another rejoicing when the team found a particularly succulent tree root). The Five-Pointed Fruit was at his—well, his triad's—disposal tonight. Anxious waiters hovered in the background, hoping they didn't commit a lethal faux pas in the unknown social terrain of the Mad Clan Lord (Hazō was far from the first to bear the title, but after the Three Cataclysms killed off his rivals, he had inherited it by default) dining with his mind-reading Yamanaka lover and the woman he was cheating on her with, the latter of the two regularly exchanging poison-laced smiles of false affection. Out of the corner of his eye, Hazō had glimpsed a young newbie waiter setting out to approach their table, only to be held back and replaced by a veteran with a mutter that sounded very much like "fish god sex cult".
"You look positively enchanting tonight, Ino," Hazō said after an appreciative, carefully-paced and subtle-but-not-concealed scan (glory be to Mari) of his girlfriend in her new dress. To no one's surprise, Ino had dressed up for the occasion, with a one-piece dress of blue with gold lace, a softly-sparkling shawl, and gold-and-sapphire earrings each of which individually mocked the trivial expenditure of booking out one teeny restaurant for a single night. "We should expect another Hagoromo inquisition to burst through the door at any moment, because there's no way anyone could look this good without forbidden magic."
"Eight out of ten for the compliment," Ino said, "minus two points for bringing up the Hagoromo in polite company. Some of us are preparing to eat."
Hazō laughed.
He glanced at Akane, who was more of a challenge. The love of his life had spent the day at the training field, and it didn't take a social spec to tell that she'd come here immediately afterwards, probably running late, with the briefest of stops at the now conveniently located Gōketsu compound to wash and throw on the first presentable items in her wardrobe. Obviously, Akane would look radiant in a burlap sack, but it was difficult to find opportunities for praise in the muted green blouse and trousers that put Hazō in mind of a more sophisticated version of her standard gardening kit.
"Akane, you're also very…"
The instant of hesitation, though brief, was fatal.
"It's fine, Hazō," Akane said, but without resentment. "I know when I'm outclassed. I'm not going to compete with Ino on fashion—that would be like you competing with Kagome on safety, or Yūma with Yuno on tracking techniques."
Not that Hazō himself had a leg to stand on—with his mind elsewhere these days, he'd opted for one of his standard Mari-coordinated clan-colour outfits. Akane would recognise that even if Ino didn't, so he was out of any competition by default.
"So," he moved on with the utmost haste, "Ino. It's been far too long. How have you been doing? Any interesting missions lately?"
Ino's smile, already marred with a touch of unease after Hazō's exchange with Akane, faded further still, revealing a weariness she'd previously been concealing with amazing skill.
"All of the missions, Hazō," she said, "and few of them interesting. I could kiss Ami for making sure no more of my clan died, and then I'd push her into a mud pit for doing it in a way that's left Leaf flooded with spies like rendclaws swarming to a call for aid. Our ranks of competent mind-scanners have been depleted, and we've had more than one case of under-trained fresh chūnin turning foreign citizens into vegetables who aren't capable of confessing to anything. Then Rock or whoever naturally steps in to demand reparations and raise a stink about Leaf aggression, even though most of the spies are civilians, who are disposable and always have been. So naturally, every time anyone captures a potential spy who needs interrogating with a deft hand, they go to me. Then it's either the hundredth by-the-numbers mind scan of some patsy who's probably going to get executed either way, or exhausting myself wrestling with an actual professional who's done things I can't unsee as part of their job.
"Let's not talk about it," she said after a moment. "How about you tell us some tales of your thrilling adventures on the Seventh Path? I gather from Akane that it's all going to the dogs over there, except the dogs, who are going to the pangolins."
"Understatement of the year," Hazō said with a wry smile. "The Great Seal's still intractable, the Dragons are still terrifying, and most of the summons are either burying their heads in the sand or outright trying to kill me."
But with that, memories of the hyenas flickered through his mind. Memories of a plan which was only almost good enough, and the almost being measured in canine lives. Memories of a desperate fight in which he could do nothing. Memories of the dogs mourning, channelling their feelings into vengeance so they wouldn't all go into blaming him for failing to save their pack.
"I… Ino, people are dying so I can sort this out. The Hornets and the Arachnids are sacrificing themselves to keep the Dragons at bay even as we speak, and there's nothing I can do about it. Even when I should be able to do something about it, I'm not smart enough, or not strong enough, or not diplomatic enough, and people I'm personally responsible for protecting get killed before my eyes.
"Once upon a time this was an adventure. I got to go on a journey to a distant land. I saw the Arachnid capital, and it was nothing like I could have imagined—a place that simply couldn't exist in our world, populated by alien beings living by laws that make no sense to us. I bargained with an empress and helped outsmart the Sage himself. I witnessed a miracle of sealcrafting that violates everything we know about seals and their limitations. I accepted a challenge with the survival of multiple worlds as its stake.
"Now, that part of my life is starting to feel like a dream. Everything is a battle, and most of my opponents are the very people I'm trying to save. I can't protect anybody, and I'm barely starting to get my head around how the Great Seal works, never mind how to fix it, and I don't have time because sooner or later the Dragons will get hungry again and then another clan will disappear from the world, and then another. I went to an island that used to have a flourishing civilisation before the Dragons came, and now it's just… dead. Worse than dead. Dead in ways I can't describe even with a summoner's grounding in Seventh Path magic.
"In a couple of days, I'm going to head to the Conclave and try to persuade the clans to take action against a threat that's real and urgent and can only be faced if they band together. I don't know if I can do it. I do know what'll happen if I can't."
Wordlessly, Ino stretched out her hand across the table. Hazō took it and held on tight.
A second later, Akane did the same.
"I believe in you, Hazō," Akane said. "I always have. I've never met anyone with so much power to inspire. Your calls to action can turn someone's beliefs upside down. You've changed the world over and over just by saying the right words to the right people at the right time. I doubt there will be a single summon at the Conclave whose conviction that things should stay the same is half as strong as your conviction that they all need to act, and that means they'll break first."
"Just… please be safe, Hazō," Ino added. "I know you're a summoner and you feel you have responsibilities, but your home is here. The people who love you are here. The people who need you are here. Don't let yourself die for a bunch of strangers. At the end of the day, it's the summons who are responsible for the Summon Realm, and if they refuse to stop the Dragons, then we'll do it ourselves—all of us, together."
Hazō shook his head. "You don't understand, Ino. I don't think we can. The Dragons aren't like chakra beasts. They don't follow the rules we know."
"You killed one," Ino objected. "It was simple and brilliant, and if I know you at all, it's not the last trick you've got up your sleeve."
"I don't know if my tricks will work," Hazō said. "There's one Dragon that brainwashes everyone who sees it. Even Enma—the Monkey King, a legend of the Seventh Path, with his alleged will of diamond—couldn't resist it when he first saw it, and he says just remembering it strains him. He can't even describe what it is he saw, except that it was beautiful. I don't know how to counter 'beautiful', or I wouldn't keep getting mesmerised by you two. Even if I could, how are we supposed to find out what other powers it has if looking at it is suicide and you can't describe what you saw anyway?
"They're all like that, as far as we know. They're not like ninja. They're more like Akatsuki, where you're taking constant losses while you figure out their abilities, and even then, it's possible that you've lost the compatibility roulette and all you can do is run."
Ino's eyes darkened a little, and Hazō mentally kicked himself.
"Sorry, Ino. That was insensitive."
Ino shook her head. "It's been long enough. I can't sit there wallowing in my own feelings while I have responsibilities. Besides, these days everyone else has their own families to mourn."
Akane reached out and took her hand anyway, completing the triangle.
"The Dragons already being S-rank threats isn't even the issue," Hazō went on. "The real issue is that they get powers from every clan boss they eat. That's why we can't wait for them to come to us, even if we're willing to sacrifice the Seventh Path. We have to make a stand here and now, or else by the time they get here, they'll be back to the kind of power level where even the Sage could only seal them away—and I'm no Sage yet, and neither is Orochimaru."
Ino's eyebrows rose slightly in puzzlement.
"I've finally got him on board," Hazō said. "He looked at the Great Seal with me, and it made more sense to him than it did to me—or at least, it made sense in different but complementary ways. Having him help is a major victory. Of course, it also means potentially delivering him a new source of Sage-tier power, but we can deal with that problem once we make sure there's a Human Path left for him to threaten."
"Is it me," Ino observed, "or has the world gone insane over the last few years? We're at the point now where I can go 'Oh, yeah, Leaf's most terrifying missing-nin being appointed head of medical whatever and openly buying victims to murder? I guess that was a thing. The other day, my boyfriend went for a stroll with him in another world to try and reverse-engineer an artefact made by the Sage of Six Paths. So, what's for dinner?'"
Speaking of dinner, the staff were still lurking warily in the background. Hazō strongly suspected they didn't dare interrupt the 'romantic moment' of the three of them holding hands—which his stomach was not happy about, but on the other hand, it was probably best for the waiters' sanity that they didn't overhear a single stray word about the Dragon issue.
Hazō squeezed his partners' hands one more time and gently disengaged. He cast a glance in the direction of the nearest waiter, and menus were served with all conceivable haste so as to allow the woman to beat a hasty retreat from the table.
The Five-Pointed Fruit was known for having five different sub-menus: Fire was obviously dedicated to fried foods, Water was the domain of soup, and Earth was primarily vegetables. Hazō ended up settling on the Lightning menu, which was spicy enough to electrocute the tongue, and thus a great way to impress and/or amuse one's dates, depending on whether one's resolve won out against the dish's brutal assault. Hazō was feeling pretty confident.
"What about you, Akane?" Hazō asked. "It says a lot that we haven't had a chance to catch up for a while despite living in the same building."
"My news… isn't actually depressing," Akane said. "It's probably for the best that we left it till last."
"Do tell."
"I have a new genin team," Akane said.
"But didn't you say you didn't feel ready for one?" Hazō asked with a frown.
"It was Lord Hokage's suggestion," Akane said, and the pieces began to fall into place. "I was going to be tied up with tutoring for a while anyway as part of our adoption deal, but this way the KEI get more of the support they need, and it makes our adoption deal a straightforward success for them instead of a grudging bargain. He and I talked it over, and eventually I realised that I was being selfish by only worrying about my own feelings. Leaf doesn't have many people who can serve as genin team leaders right now, and KEI genin especially are very vulnerable until they get some experience and start developing their specialisations. If I can save somebody's life by working hard enough, then I just have to work hard enough."
Ino gave Hazō a subtle concerned look, but he shook his head. Any offer from the Hokage that bound Akane more tightly to the village was an offer she couldn't refuse.
"So what are they like?" Ino asked lightly. "Any of them have crushes on their gorgeous sensei yet?"
Akane gave one of the warm smiles that used to be her default state of existence. "They're lovely. Nakajima's struggling with confidence issues because he didn't stand out at the Academy, but I'm sure with some encouragement he could develop into a real leader. I know I'm not exactly one of nature's leaders, so there's only so much advice I can give, but I'm glad I can be there for him instead of a harsher instructor who might crush his self-esteem without meaning to. Tomoe's already becoming the team's big sister. She's an orphan, and I get the impression she's been lonely for a long time. I think having someone to look after will be very good for her. Also, she's a natural with ranged weapons, and I'm thinking about getting Kei to give her some tips if I can tear her away from her desk for an afternoon. Manato has a very developed sense of responsibility for a boy his age. I strongly suspect he's on his way to becoming a medic-nin, because he's smart, good with ninjutsu for a fresh genin, and can't leave people alone if they need help. I don't think any of them have crushes on me, but you know I don't have a great track record of recognising that sort of thing."
Hazō cringed a little. He and Akane had taken so long to become aware of their feelings for each other, much less act on them, that the rest of the team had had time to set up a betting pool. Becoming aware of each other's feelings for themselves had been a lost cause from the start.
"I'm impressed at how well you've got to know them after such a short time," Ino observed. "I have a feeling you're going to be a much more hands-on team leader than Asuma-sensei was."
"I got some tips from Mari about quick bonding techniques," Akane admitted. "It feels a little bit like cheating, but on the other hand, the sooner they learn to trust each other—and me—the better their odds once they start coming up against real challenges."
She looked down at her dish of her Water Element: Trout with Ginger Broth Technique (it was amazing what a shinobi was prepared to put up with for the sake of a good meal).
"I do worry about them. They're such nice kids, and I don't think any of them really understand what ninja life is like, even Manato. What happens when the Hokage starts ordering them to kill innocent people for the good of Leaf? Or when they see the dying peasants in all the civilian villages that Leaf could be helping but isn't? How do I stop them from losing their Youth, or having their hearts break, or having the trauma build up until they just stop caring? Even if we work as hard as we can, Uplift won't happen fast enough to protect them from that, or the other children who are still as innocent as them. I… I don't want them to lose themselves the way I've lost myself, but I don't know what I can do.
"Sorry," she said. "That was supposed to be me cheering us up with good news."
"It's fine, Akane," Hazō said. "In a way, what you've said does make me feel better. I'm glad you have more people you care about, and who care about you. Remember how massively Mari says becoming a team leader changed her? Maybe you'll find some answers of your own, even to questions you didn't know you had."
"We find out who we are through other people," Ino said. "It's a Yamanaka saying. Just like you can't know what you look like without looking in a mirror, you've got to see how you interact with other people, how you feel about them, how those feelings change over time, all that good stuff, if you want to understand who you are. Being surrounded by your family all the time is all well and good, but there's a lot of growing you can only do by making fresh bonds.
"This is half borrowed wisdom, though," she added. "Mostly my new friends since I became clan head have been the people I need to bond with for the sake of the Yamanaka, like trade partners wavering between us and another clan, or people who might stab us in the back if they don't have enough personal loyalty to me. My actual friends are gone, and I don't have much time for personal business these days.
"Don't go haring off to get yourself killed for people who don't deserve you, Hazō. This thing between the three of us is a large chunk of my personal business now, and things would really suck without it."
"I won't," Hazō said. Now that he'd had a bite to eat, the literal fire in his belly was fuelling the metaphorical kind. "You can be sure of that. I know I said the Seventh Path is in dire straits right now, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to blindside the Conclave with my powers of persuasion, marshal them into a single cohesive force that wipes the floor with the Dragons, and restore the Great Seal to pristine condition so this kind of nonsense never happens again. I'm sorry if I gave you any other impression."
Ino looked deep into his eyes for a few long seconds. He looked back with all the determination he could muster.
"How could I forget?" Ino asked herself softly. "It wasn't your good looks that I fell for."
-o-
With Enma nearly ready to leave Arachnid to return to the Conclave, Hazō's ability to spend lots of time on the Human Path would soon end. Still, there were a couple novel seals to research before then if Hazō wanted to maximize his odds of creating a favorable environment for Enma's arrival. Hazō's actions weren't pivotal in their plans, but with the stakes being somewhere between genocide and omnicide at the hands of the Dragons, Hazō needed to give it everything he had.
He donned the raiment of the Hidden Leaf clan head. Over time, the tailors and designers had gotten used to Jiraiya's… eccentric choice of colors. Their initial attempts had been horrendous, but now they'd learned to lean more into the pale pinks and greens, to accent with golds and silvers, and to supplement only the occasional flash of bright color. All the better, as too bright a green may have been seen as a sign of allegiance to the still fledgling Churches of Youth.
With that done, he finally left his rooms and went downstairs. Mari had spent plenty of time drilling him on the importance of decorum and propriety, and while Hazō rejected parts of the old system wholeheartedly, he couldn't deny the importance of his outward presentation, even when it came solely to maintaining his image within the clan.
Reo and Yuma were off duty today and were chatting amiably over their morning tea on the couches. Both rose to greet Hazō as he entered, and quickly sat as he waved them down. Kazushi had monopolized a corner of the kitchen table with various papers. He noticed Hazō as his clan head wandered over and gave Hazō a quick nod, before returning to his reading. A copy of Jiraiya's sealing textbook, with pages torn away from the spine and organized according to some conceptual mapping that Hazō couldn't be bothered to understand. The young genin had been voraciously working his way through all of Jiraiya's work. Hazō smiled internally at the thought that Kazushi may one day meet his sealmaster hero.
Mari came down into the main room and spread her arms above her head as she gave a tremendous yawn. The mistress of decorum and propriety had her hair all tousled up from sleeping, and she wore her massively oversized puffy robe, complete with fuzzy slippers. The yawn turned into a small hiccup, prompting Mari to quickly cover her mouth with a cute half-whispered "excuse me." For all her antics, Hazō wondered if she'd ever fooled any of the other Gōketsu (bar perhaps Yuno) into thinking that Mari wasn't the most lethal person in the room.
Having drawn the room's attention with her back-arching yawn, she smiled at them and padded over to Hazō with her slippers making soft sliding sounds across the floor.
"Shouldn't you be with your genin team around now?" Hazō asked.
"I told them to take the day off," Mari said. "They're going to be wracked with worry the whole day. It's going to be so cute! I'm going to sneak after them around lunchtime to see what trouble they get themselves into while trying to solve nonexistent problems."
Hazō shook his head. "Poor kids. If only I could hand them some real things to worry about for a day so I could take a day off."
Mari smiled darkly. "Tomorrow, they're going to wish they had taken the chance. But today is for relaxing." She looked Hazō over. "Seal research?"
"That's right," Hazō said. "In fact… are you ready, Kazushi?"
Kazushi nodded, turning his body towards the door even as his eyes remained fixated on the scattered pages in front of him.
"Kazushi?"
He finally got the message and turned, swiftly nodded and bowing to Hazō. "Yes, sir! Sorry, I just…"
"It's fine," Hazō said, laughing. "Put your things away and come along."
Kazushi scrambled to order the pages and Hazō put on his overcoat. Together, they left the family home.
Hazō clutched his coat instinctively against the chill winter breeze. The winters were colder in Leaf than in Mist, but never quite so cold as the Land of Snow. Hazō said a quiet thanks to an additional benefit of the ridiculous clan head garments – the layers upon layers of robes helped to keep the heat in quite well on cloudy, overcast days such as this one.
Despite the cold, the clan's civilians had come out in full force. One of them, Gōketsu Akito, had been a miller prior to the Collapse. While he'd been working as a day laborer while in the old estate, returning to Leaf and having easier access to a riverside (though Leaf's largest rivers sadly didn't pass close to the Gōketsu estate) had made him return to the idea of his old profession. He'd marshaled people to work with him, brought a request before his clan lord, and gotten approval from the Merchant Council (after Mari had pulled some strings) to build a new mill. Now, Akito had turned the forest near the Gōketsu housing area into a lumberyard as they prepared to construct the new millhouse on a plot of recently purchased land in Leaf proper.
Absently, Hazō wondered if they would need his help to create the millstone. With the Earthshaping Technique, he could carve the channels in the millstone far faster than any man, and he could make the millstone out of a stone that wouldn't ordinarily be carvable, in order to reduce the maintenance required. He needed to find a moment to speak with Akito about it… though Hazō would likely be far too busy to spend a day making a millstone. Perhaps it could take only a couple hours if they carved out the gross form first? Oh, and could he use different stone types, or manipulate densities to make the millstone grind more efficiently?
Hazō shook his head. There was no time for any of that. He needed to focus on the sealing research. Maybe he could instruct Reo to learn Earthshaping if it seemed worthwhile, but Hazō likely wouldn't have the time to personally prop up every civilian endeavor.
The wind changed direction, picking up in intensity and carrying colder air with it. Hazō held his coat tighter as he and Kazushi strode through the estate, making quick gestures of acknowledgement to those bowing towards their clan head. Hazō sighed internally. It was a shame that Mari denied his requests for scarves or hats in his wardrobe. Apparently, people needed to see his face.
There were too many projects happening that he needed to check on. The skyslider project had stalled from the sound of it, and Hazō needed to find a couple days to understand their progress, identify why they were stalling, and come up with new directions for them to explore. The sanitation team claimed to be making progress, but Hazō could see no substantial changes personally, and all their reports indicated that their pipes were still getting blocked on the regular. They were partially limited by "throughput". Hazō always felt weird ordering people to do their business in the sanitation team's various prototypes, but, on reflection, telling civilians where to shit was far from the most offensive order a Leaf clan head had given.
Too many problems. Beyond the Gōketsu endeavors, Leaf was facing iron shortages as two of the mines near Tanzaku Gai had run dry. The Tower had that well in hand because of its obvious importance to military readiness, but it meant they weren't paying as much attention to the equally important salt shortage, which, if it continued, would make it harder for ordinary people to make it through the winter as the costs of preserved meats from the butcheries would skyrocket. The Ministry was facing the expected problem of middlemen pocketing the profits from the lowered taxes, rather than the common people. Worse, the Land of Fire was dealing with persistent banditry problems – no doubt from refugees and displaced farmers from the war now preying on those that kept their lands and were now enjoying a bumper crop.
Hazō shook his head and sighed. They were his problems, but he needed to prioritize. To triage, as Noburi talked about. The Dragons. Resurrecting the dead. Becoming strong enough to not get killed by any S-ranker with an oversized ego (i.e., any of them). Those were the problems he could afford to put his time into. The civilian children playing in the streets, the woman throwing clay to make pottery, the cooper and his apprentices carving away at their oak-wood to make a new barrel – their problems were important and worthwhile, but they weren't things Hazō could personally solve.
Kazushi hadn't spoken at all as they walked, now passing through the granite shantytown that Hazō had erected for the clan's civilians. The young genin had glanced at his clan head a couple of times, but now seemed to have also retreated into his own imagination. Hazō mentally started running through some ideas for training exercises. If Kazushi was going to assist Hazō in his sealing research, he needed Kazushi to be fully alert and undistracted.
The breeze to Hazō's back intensified. Hazō took one, two more treacherous steps before something in Hazō's mind made him stop. Something was wrong. A few civilians were looking at the sky, rather than at whatever business had brought them out this early in the morning.
Hazō turned and saw it. The clouds were being pulled down from the sky, funneled down into a point now hidden by a rapidly expanding wall of white.
Hazō stared at it for one whole, wasteful second, as some part of his mind repeatedly tried to slam the obvious conclusion into his model of the world as the rest of him blindly rejected what was plainly in front of him.
Finally, Hazō accepted it. Someone had cast Elemental Mastery above Leaf, barely a mile away from Hazō. Hashirama's Village Hidden in the Leaves had lasted seventy years. It would not survive the minute.
But why would Asuma… No, Asuma would never. Would Asuma teach someone? Maybe another Sarutobi? Shikamaru had thought that even Asuma would find the thought unacceptable. And Akane would never teach anyone, not outside the clan. Would she teach anyone in the clan? Not while she thought she may still be surveilled by ANBU, or even at risk of another mindscan. Who else could it possibly be?
A mile southwest of here… would be Orochimaru's compound. Had Akane broken under the pressure and finally decided to use her power to end the Final Gift Program without thinking through the consequences? Hazō felt his gut churn. Unlike the rest of Team Uplift, Akane had had friends among Leaf's clanless ninja. She would have known dozens of them from her class and just from being friendly in the way that Akane was. Why had he never thought to ask if she'd known someone who had been taken to be tortured in Orochimaru's Basement?
The full implication hit Hazō. It hadn't even been three seconds since the "snapping point" of Elemental Mastery, and the cloud already looked close to a mile wide. Hazō had ten seconds at most to take action.
Hazō's mind dropped into emergency planning mode.
He could still survive this. He had Rocket Boots on, not skywalkers, but he could swap them out and get away. No, he was thinking about this wrong. He could reverse summon to the Seventh Path and wait out the storm. He didn't need to escape on foot.
Who could he save? The Gōketsu civilians in the streets, now turning their heads so glacially to follow their clan head's gaze, were dead men walking. They could not be saved. Except perhaps one or two? Children would be easier to move… No, focus.
Noburi? At the hospital, already engulfed in the cloud. He would be indoors, which would maybe buy him a fraction of a second. He would be by Tsunade's side, and he had his scroll. If he was alive, he was already safe. If he was dead, there was nothing Hazō could do about it.
Hazō felt his stomach turn over at the thought. He kept thinking.
Kei would be in the Nara compound, with Shikamaru. The borders of the cloud seemed nearly there. If she was outdoors and had already noticed it, she might be able to reverse summon. If she was indoors, she would get caught in the flood, and she would have no Tsunade to pull out a random Sannin ninjutsu to keep her safe. She was beyond Hazō's ability to influence. Her fate was already decided.
Shikamaru was going to die in the next three seconds. Ino was going to die in the next three seconds. Hazō felt plans flick through his head to save his friends and rejected every one. He couldn't save them.
Wait, Kei had implied that the extinction of the Tama would be catastrophic. Would the eradication of the Nara clan cause another apocalypse? Hazō couldn't afford to think about this right now.
Kagome was training with Honoka in one of Leaf's outlying training grounds. A fractional relief washed through Hazō. Kagome would have the time and skywalkers to grab her and escape.
Akane…
Mari was still in the house. If the freezing flood reached the main house before she knew it was happening, she would die. She needed to get her sandals and skywalkers on and her seals ready, but she could still survive. Hazō could still save her.
Kazushi had already glanced at the strange clouds and had redirected his attention to his clan head. The civilians around them were looking at the clouds, and a couple had turned to Hazō with questions on their lips. He couldn't bring himself to look at their faces. Dead men walking, he told himself.
"Skywalkers, now!" he yelled at Kazushi. "Grab a kid and run up!"
That was all Hazō had time to say before his Substitution carried him out of range. Hazō immediately triggered his Rocket Boots, letting them carry him further as he swiped his hand across the nail on his belt. He stopped running for an agonizing moment. "Summoning Technique: Cantamai!"
The puppy appeared dazed and disoriented, but Hazō quickly scooped her up and plopped her into a pocket before continuing to run. He still had plenty of reserves – could he cast Shadow Clone and make clones to carry people out of the estate? No, there wouldn't be enough time to give them skywalkers. Could he at least have them warn the other ninja scattered through the estate?
No, he couldn't afford to stop running again to focus on another ninjutsu. He needed to save Mari.
He kept his awareness wide as he ran, watching as the storm quickly grew to engulf Leaf. The Tower loomed, a massive shadow in the stormcloud, until something within it finally broke under the hyperspeed winds and hyperfreezing rain, and it shattered and fell.
Thousands of people in the center of Leaf were dying, freezing and shattering in the same way as the Tower that was the symbol of their protection.
Hazō had to save Mari.
He knocked the door of the main building clean off its hinges with a snap kick. Already, he could hear the popping sounds of trees on the Gōketsu estate exploding as they were consumed by the freezing flood.
"Everyone! Mari! Skywalkers, now! Up in the sky, as far as you can go!"
Mari booped him on the nose.
Hazō stopped still. The chill wind around him was no longer there. There was no sagging weight in his pocket of the summoned Cantamai.
Mari laughed, grabbing her hot chocolate and pacing away down the hallway. "Don't forget your gloves, Hazō. You'll freeze up out there."
Kazushi took a long look at Hazō. "Sir, are you alright? I'm ready to leave when you are."
Hazō took a long look at Mari, considering what, if anything, to say. In the end, he swallowed it.
"It's fine. Let's go."
-o-
The second half of this update was written by the illustrious @Paperclipped. Could you tell?
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