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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Omake: Perspective
  • Apocrypha
    • Omake: Perspective
    ​
    Imagine you are Goketsu Akane.

    You died defending your students - three genin, young, curious, pushing themselves to do more and more - against a sudden assault. In the haze of combat, the attack barely registered, but your chakra sang and danced and you threw everything you had into defending them. You knew you would die, but you felt absolute peace. You felt the Will of Fire burn through you and everything made sense in that moment.

    You died protecting what was precious to you and you hope that they escaped. You died protecting the village, you died protecting the innocent, and you died doing what was right. It was a good death. It was too soon, but it was a good death. Now, there is white sand under your feet and a comfortable numbness. You remember faces and you imagine friends. You perform kata after kata and twist your hands through strange shapes which feel right. You aren't hungry and you aren't tired.

    You blink and startle. The air feels different. Your fingertips burn, again, a feeling you'd forgotten. There's a face in front of you - one you imagined, one you recognize. Hazo. Hazo. He found you. Everything comes rushing back - how could you have forgotten?

    Hazo, your friend, part of your heart. Hazo, your leader and confidante. Hazo, your lover. Hazo, gentle and kind, wise and caring. He's here. He came to get you. You knew he would.

    You look outside - you're in the hospital. The trees are red and orange and gold and yellow. It's fall. It wasn't fall a few minutes ago. It was winter. Your gut twists. Time has passed. At least half a year. Anxiety spikes through you. Your mother - her arm. Your father - his grief. Your family.

    Hazo.

    More memories.

    Memories of a Hazo focused on his goals to the exclusion of all else. Memories of a Hazo who creates weapons of unimaginable power.

    Memories of a Hazo who did not spare a thought for the civilians Haru murdered.

    He begins to speak. Your heart soars. Hazo, your friend, the good, the champion of the downtrodden and the would-be architect of a new, better world. Your stomach twists. Hazo, the lost and confused, the uncaring, lost in his grief and rage. He said you were his heart and moral center.

    What did he do when you were gone?
    Imagine you are Hagoromo Azugimoto.

    Everyone knows what Ruka did, now - your face puckers as you think her name. She bragged about it, privately. You never liked her. She was always too proud, too haughty, too careless. You're ashamed to be related to her. You were almost glad when she was injured - half her foot, gone. You would never tell anyone but you lit a stick of incense when she was permanently assigned to the Tower and thanked the missing nin who ended her career. She could joke about the expendability of clanless genin all she wanted but she'd never order them into danger to save her own hide again. You saw bile in her: you wanted to be a medic but never had the aptitude, but you knew that the hate in her needed to be drained. Instead, she became an abscess.

    You'd thought she couldn't hurt anyone. You'd thought it was just paperwork and that her sloppiness would be caught: the Nara were meticulous and the Sarutobi would do nothing less than their duty and the Tower and the Will of Fire...

    You take another drink.

    You don't like the Goketsu. Jiraiya was just barely tolerable, but the rest? Snakes, vipers, poison. Insidious. It explained why that one, the sealsmith, spent so much time around Orochimaru.

    You'd met Akane, though. Your son had gone through the Academy with her, a few years apart. You'd been at Mizuki's execution. It was good that he was dead. Akane had found time to spar with your son. Akane had given him advice that you'd both been sure was poison that would get him killed if he tried to break a hold like that but now you weren't sure.

    Ritsuo would know but he was running from meeting to meeting. Ruka was on house arrest and she wasn't laughing any more. Your reservation at the Blue Petal had gotten lost. The apologetic Akimichi had said there must have been a problem with the paperwork. You'd left, stung, ashamed, and wondering if you deserved that humiliation.

    You take another drink.

    Goketsu Akane is dead. The sealmaster - Goketsu Hazo - had lost his...what. Concubine?

    He'd given Leaf Skywalkers. Your son was alive because of Skywalkers. He'd marveled at them. He'd said it was like flying, he'd just stepped over the grasping stone hand that would have crushed him.

    You'd thought about what you would do if he'd tried to break a hold like Goketsu had shown him and died. You would have burnt her, found some way to burn her.

    Goketsu Hazo has the ear of the Hokage and a Summoning Scroll and he knew Orochimaru and they said he'd killed a Dragon and that Lord Nara had almost killed Ritsuo with one of its scales.

    You take another drink.

    Were you wrong about them?

    Were you wrong about your clan?
    Imagine you are Hagoromo Nari.

    You'd checked in on Ruka. She'd been uncharacteristically subdued. You'd reassured her - Lord Ritsuo would take care of her. It had been a mistake. Chuunin died. Genin died. This would blow over.

    Ritsuo wouldn't turn his back on the clan. The Hokage would see sense.

    She hadn't said it out loud, but Ruka had looked worried she'd be abandoned. Executed. Executed? For what? The deaths of a jumped-up slut and genin greener than Rock Lee's idiotic jumpsuit?

    It was unthinkable. Ritsuo was Hagoromo. If he didn't defend Ruka...it wasn't thinkable. He would. Of course he would.

    Wouldn't he?
    Imagine you are Lady Inuzaka.

    A year ago, bureaucratic incompetence killed dozens of your clansmen. Stupid misfiled reports and paper-pushers bumping into each other. The anger burns in you still. They never saw justice - not truly.

    Lord Nara had refused to give you names.

    You had a name, now. Who knew what else that woman had done? What else she had ignored? Lord Nara'd said he'd cleaned house, trained everyone who needed training, reassured you all that the Tower could be trusted.

    Obviously not.

    How many more of her might there be?

    You run your hands through the fur of your best friend. It should have been comforting. Instead, she growls, and you growl along with her.

    The Hagoromo have betrayed the pack.

    Will the Hokage?
    Imagine you are Hagoromo Ritsuo.

    Don't do that. I like you too much for that.

    Imagine, instead, that you watching him from a distance, aware of his every thought. He is small-minded but not stupid. He is in a tight spot. He can wriggle out of personal responsibility - he's done that his whole life, dodging blame and accumulating praise and honour. It's as easy as breathing.

    But now the Hokage wants accountability. Everyone wants accountability for something some idiot underneath him did.

    If he throws the idiot to the wolves - he saw the look in Lady Inuzaka's eyes - his clan will revolt. She might even try to drag him down with her.

    (He can't bring yourself to admit she might even succeed.)

    If he protects her, he'll never see another adoption ticket and all that work chipping away at the Goketsu won't mean anything and the liberals will come for him. He's already heard the whispers. The old ways don't work, this time it's gone too far, maybe -

    Imagine you are Hagoromo Ritsuo. Get as close as you can without sustaining brain damage.

    You are scared, deep down. You can feel your grip loosening - your fingers ache, your hand is tired, you are hanging onto everything at once and you have been hanging onto everything at once for so long, and everyone is trying to tear it away from you, tear honour and decency and tradition away from Leaf.

    You are so, so tired.

    Fear will not help, so you push it down. You remember your vows and your people and your strong arms and your ninjutsu and the fire that burns in you. Maybe? Maybe nothing. You push down the fear and doubt and ignore the stares. You have more meetings to attend, more ruffled feathers to soothe, more waters to test, more alliances to secure and more doubt to sow. You've weathered worse. Your faith cannot be shaken.

    Can it?
    Imagine you are Goketsu Hazo.
     
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  • Apocrypha
    • Non-prose thoughts:

    Asuma is under a year out from the war with Rock and the accompanying failure of the Tower bureaucracy to accurately track mission results, culminating in a huge number of deaths. That was verifiably incompetence. This was credibly malice. The clans are not going to be happy.

    What else did Ruka 'miss'? Who else might have 'missed' mission status reports? What if it isn't just the Hagoromo - what if a Minami clerk was less-than-diligent in filing paperwork for Hyuuga missions? He can't afford a civil war. He needs to restore trust immediately and decisively.

    If we play this right, we can likely prompt an internal schism within the Hagoromo and get a more liberal clan head elected or appointed. Ritsuo is between a rock and a hard place: if he disavows Ruka he's going to upset hardliners who probably don't even see this as a big deal ('C-rank missions blend together' is going to be a commonly-held view and implies a level of contempt for genin and chuunin) but if he doesn't take this seriously he's going to piss off the Hokage.

    We, personally, don't have to demand much here. We can even throw Asuma a bone by being reasonable, but we can be reasonable in Asuma's eyes while remaining unreasonable in Ritsuo's while our allies bay for blood and justice. We can talk about how dearly we want amicable relations with the Hagoromo and how unfortunate it is that factions within the Hagoromo seem Nakara-bent on perpetuating this feud. We know that there are good Hagoromo and we'd hate for them to be painted with a broad brush, and it's so unfortunate that a few assholes have such disproportionate power within the clan.

    Heck, we can even launder those opinions through the Nara and the KEI and the Yamanaka.

    There are cracks here and we can apply pressure to them. If we play our cards right, we might be able to install a new leader who'd be hard to depose, given that they have the full support of the ISC, the KEI, the Tower, and the Goketsu. They can enact social change and we can all enjoy a more liberal Leaf.

    Simultaneously, if anyone makes a play for vengeance in Akane's name, I will oppose you. The woman who agonized endlessly over what is good and right would take one look at vengeance and immediately decline. You can't even say 'she's dead, she doesn't get to have an opinion any more' because even if she is dead, she will not stay that way.

    I refuse to dishonour her memory. If you can't bring yourself to act in alignment with what she'd want - which is not Ritsuo's corpse or exile, which is not lashing out or more death - please leave this alone. The entire point of the quest is that Hazo can act in considered ways, doing what's right and what makes sense. That's his superpower. I'm here to imagine what it would be like to have the power to do the right thing, the good thing, and make it stick, all rendered in high-fidelity prose by our peerless QMs.

    I can go elsewhere for vengeance porn.
     
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    FaintlySorcerous said:
    I am really really really hoping that it drives home to people that we cannot screw this up by going on a vengeance bender.

    It would be a stupid waste of a golden opportunity and the actual-factual betrayal of our values would honestly just be sad.
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    Is it a core betrayal though? Hazou was 100% on the murder train over the concubine issue, a comparatively minor slight. I'm not sure this would be an actual betrayal of his core values.

    I'm not saying we should burn down the Hag compound or anything. But I'm not convinced it's out of character.
     
    FaintlySorcerous said:
    If we play this right, we can likely prompt an internal schism within the Hagoromo and get a more liberal clan head elected or appointed. Ritsuo is between a rock and a hard place: if he disavows Ruka he's going to upset hardliners who probably don't even see this as a big deal ('C-rank missions blend together' is going to be a commonly-held view and implies a level of contempt for genin and chuunin) but if he doesn't take this seriously he's going to piss off the Hokage.
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    Remember that Ritsuo is an Elite Jounin and Leaf cannot lose anymore elite Jounin, moreover, while ticket are needed for ninja, the same is not true for civilians.
    The Hagoromo can simply take the needed new blood from civilians and keep going without a care in the world, aside from any damage Asuma will decide to inflict directly, on top of that Ritsuo cannot be kicked out of the Clan anymore that Jiraiya could have been kicked out of the Clan, he's the strongest and might triumphs everything in ninja world.

    EDIT: What is probable is that Ritsuo will throw the responsible clerk to the wolves, while asking for mitigating the punishment to nothing permanent....and keep hurting Goketsu when he can, only growing more spiteful.
     
    Lord Marshal said:
    Remember that Ritsuo is an Elite Jounin and Leaf cannot lose anymore elite Jounin, moreover, while ticket are needed for ninja, the same is not true for civilians.
    The Hagoromo can simply take the needed new blood from civilians and keep going without a care in the world, aside from any damage Asuma will decide to inflict directly, on top of that Ritsuo cannot be kicked out of the Clan anymore that Jiraiya could have been kicked out of the Clan, he's the strongest and might triumphs everything in ninja world.

    EDIT: What is probable is that Ritsuo will throw the responsible clerk to the wolves, while asking for mitigating the punishment to nothing permanent....and keep hurting Goketsu when he can, only growing more spiteful.
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    I think he's just a normal Jonin.
     
    faflec said:
    I think he's just a normal Jonin.
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    He's old and he's alive, he's by definition an elite Jounin. It's how the demographics work, you're an EJounin or you're dead, it's simple as that. :V

    To clarify, this doesn't mean i'm pro-"super uber vengeances and murder", but i'm honestly tired of the Hagoromo hurting us, and this is actually hurting one of Uplift.
    Am i pro super-vengeance? No. But i'm pro "I do not want the Hagomoro to hurt us in any way, shape or form, not even indirectly, and i'm willing to hurt them as much as needed to defang the danger to our family".
    Best case scenario Asuma is reasonable and make sure this will happen, not like the last two times he said "Everything will be fine" and we won't need to start anything.
     
    There's no need for eloquence here: let's just try to not have such a villain arc over this that Akane comes back to life just to kick some sense into us.

    Or do. It might be faster than Project Necromancy, y'know?
     
    I don't intend to have a villain arc. I also don't intend to let Ritsuo or his clan get away with this. My preferred vengeance against Ritsuo specifically is for him to be subject to the civilian-izing treatment Haru was.
     
    Lord Marshal said:
    on top of that Ritsuo cannot be kicked out of the Clan anymore that Jiraiya could have been kicked out of the Clan, he's the strongest and might triumphs everything in ninja world.
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    We know that there are currently ABNU Yamanaka and Hyuuga. They aren't running their clans despite the fact that they'd take Ino and Hinata to the cleaners. The most politically powerful ninja runs the clan and we can make Ritsuo a political liability.
    Cariyaga said:
    My preferred vengeance against Ritsuo specifically is
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    My stance is that we should specially avoid voting in any sort of vengeance. Akane would not want it.
     
    How about we wait to see if Akane even needs vengeance before we begin plotting? Don't get me wrong, I have ideas, but this seems a bit premature.
     
    FaintlySorcerous said:
    We know that there are currently ABNU Yamanaka and Hyuuga. They aren't running their clans despite the fact that they'd take Ino and Hinata to the cleaners. The most politically powerful ninja runs the clan and we can make Ritsuo a political liability.

    My stance is that we should specially avoid voting in any sort of vengeance. Akane would not want it.
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    The social structures of Leaf require vengeance in some form, and I will vote against an utter lack thereof. I don't give a damn what Akane would want, if we don't give people incentive not to fuck with us, they will continue fucking with us.
     
    FaintlySorcerous said:
    My stance is that we should specially avoid voting in any sort of vengeance. Akane would not want it.
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    I don't agree with this really, despite not personally gunning for any drastic action. I don't think she'd want us to seek vengeance at the expense of ourselves but I've never had the impression she's opposed to the idea of vengeance in general. Were the situations reversed I'm pretty convinced she would beat Hagoromo ass the minute she thought she could get away with it (whether that has to wait til she's S rank or what have you.)
     
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