- Location
- Fifth Dimension
Hazou, the Goketsu, and their reputation. Also EJ since he gets to write a cool/badass MC for a few moments.
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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- 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
Hazou, the Goketsu, and their reputation. Also EJ since he gets to write a cool/badass MC for a few moments.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Remind me again how it helps them? The message it sends is 'Hazo is incapable of politely playing politics'. That just communicates weakness.
This is a matter of opinion but I honestly disagree this would be a cool moment. When I read it, I kinda rolled my eyes and went 'great, more of this'.
If you thought that destroying Ritsuo's kunai was cool, maybe you agree this is cool, too, but I thought that was a dumb L and I was legitimately disappointed and upset when Hazo!Pilot did it without input. Again: beneath him, stooping to the level of our foes, without any material advantage.
It's already obvious to every sane clan that fucking with the Goketsu is a bad idea. Asuma is going to make it even more obvious when he executes Ruka and does whatever he does to the Hagoromo at large.
It doesn't do anything.
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- Location
- Fifth Dimension
Because it sends the message that Hazou cares about his clansmen and won't simply bow to the Hokage if you hurt them. It also lays out just how dangerous he and the Goketsu are and could possibly deter future attacks.
Stopping to their level would be killing them.
Agendas this, agendas that, being a perfectly rational actor... they are literally responsible for Akane's murder to one degree or another, and you think its petty? That we should now apologize and express our deepest regrets that we were a bit...
Rude to a psychopath who gets people killed because they dislike their clan?
Sorry, but to hell with optimization. Besides, no one is going to respect us if we just bend over and literally apologize to the people punching or outright killing us, like we are the ones at fault.
We are a goddamn chuunin! Yet, we have to deal with Dragons, because no one else will. We have to deal with stopping the end of the world via the Naraka because Akatsuki will get to that otherwise. And we have to juggle those with living next to a clan of bigots itching to get us killed, spending time in the basement of a sleezy snake psychopath that tortures people in elaborate and sick ways while we smile and help them and a lot of other things, while we toil day and night. And you know what? All of that is because of Leaf. Once again, we are a chuunin. We should be taking C and B ranks to this day. Instead we are dealing with literally all of the most pressing problems of the village AND the world and getting not one iota of gratitude for it. The most Asuma's ever done for us is throw us a bone so we will bugger off and say that he will be emotionally available if we need to talk, but always refuses to do anything substantial. We are afforded all the responsibility without any power.
Let me ask you this, are you seriously saying that not earnestly and publicly apologizing to one of the killers of our family is petty?
Honestly my preferred course of action at this point is getting Mari a Scroll and then having core Team Uplift fuck off to the Seventh Path, training there in peace without stupid responsibilities that no one has any right to impose on us, and just leaving Leaf to found our own place with our own rules, after we reach jounin, get enough chakra to summon Bosses, and Mari hits S-rank. We don't owe this "least jerk of the five villages of killers" anything, they owe us a lot, and maybe if we stopped bending over backwards they would realize it. Oh well, who am I kidding, they would try to murder us the moment we stopped slave working for their benefit. Hence why Seventh Path.
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No.
I am saying that defying the orders of our Hokage helps no one and that we should care about outcomes. This means we keep our powder dry.
I don't care about manners, particularly. I do care about whether what we're doing is smart and whether it actually gets us anywhere.
- Location
- Yes.
Out of curiosity, @FaintlySorcerous, what did you think of my alterations to your original speech-plan? Specifically, do you think the callbacks to the Will of Fire as Asuma and Shikamaru originally described them are worth adding?
For reference:
For reference:
We can make a change by being less bloodthristy.
- Location
- how about no
MfD is ultimately a role playing game.
QM's are people not computers (I think) outputting near perfect Naruto universe related simulations.
If there is a definitive way we can ensure at least one of them has some fun the least we can do for them after almost 8 years of free entertainment is to make little wishes come true.
If anyone else feels the same way I'm updating my plan to reflect this sentiment.
EDIT: Update made:
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I don't care about the orders of the Hokage. And why should I, he would literally let us get dissected easier than most small corporations fire people. Asuma doesn't care about us beyond extracting value and playing nice so that he can do so without burdening his conscience overmuch. He cares about keeping the village together, not any of its inhabitants in particular, or if there are any, we are not on that list.
I don't care about taking the best possible course of action and bowing to authority. I care about being moral. And apologizing to someone murdering family for the good of a community we don't even much care about is morally abhorrent. Especially when that community is trying to force us to do so on implicit threat of killbox, yet does not punish the perpetrator in any substantial way. All that after we've toiled like a slave to help it and save the world for several years, and what's Hagoromo done? Been useless jerks and bigots for all the years we've been there? Sure, ninja on missions, but every clan does that.
We need to stop having Team Uplift be people pleasers and stop being loyal to people who barely care about us. We are in a den of stinky snakes whose only redeeming factor is they stink a bit less than the snakes in the other four dens, and for years now we've been doing nothing but turning the other buttcheck whenever someone spanks us, loudly thanking them for it. Being harmless and apologetic to abusers never works well, and that's all we've been doing. Its no wonder people in power don't respect us much and are willing to step on our clan all the time. And they will never respect us so long as that's how we keep acting, and making an earnest apology in such a time is doing just that.
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Heleor
^_^
How are they (Hagoromo) literally responsible for Akane's death? Signs point to her being dead the second day after the mission assignment. Delaying the report is treasonous but if it did not happen, Akane would still be dead.
(Unless the mission itself was never supposed to be assigned, which I'm not sure was confirmed either way?)
(Unless the mission itself was never supposed to be assigned, which I'm not sure was confirmed either way?)
- Location
- Yes.
Just an FYI and this won't change my vote for your plan, but IIRC EJ's badass speech was given to the Clan Council and not to the Goketsu Clan.
That does not matter. What matters is the Hagoromo made a deliberate choice to not report a delay, knowing full well it could have resulted in Akane's death, and even though she was probably dead regardless of that action, it made it impossible for us to follow an otherwise easy trail (Canvass would likely not have lost it if it was 24h old), which could have in those other circumstances led us to discover that she is still alive, or at least get a clear picture of the situation.
Besides, like Hazou has pointed out, they assigned her on that mission which is near the Rock border, ahead of time, knowing full well that she is a high priority target for hostile ninja of that village especially. She wasn't meant to go on a mission quite so soon after getting the genin team, either. So yes, they are about as directly responsible as you can get without actually dirtying their hands (which there is zero certainty they did not do, by the way, could well have collaborated with the attackers for all we know)
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- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Just have to have patience. Eventually it will be time to make skulls for the skull throne and blood for the blood god. For now we wait and sharpen our knives. Knowing that vengeance is best fulfilled in time
- Location
- how about no
If he wants to have it in front of the Clan Council only, the estate only, both, neither, or somewhere else entirely it doesn't really matter to me.
He asked for a chance for a badass speech so he gets the opportunity for a badass speech, no further strings attached. We can deal with the minor fallout afterwards since I trust him not to screw us over after saying this:
I choose trust.
Nah, the choice not to report the delay doesn't matter, she was already dead. There was nothing we could have done. Being furious about that to the point of starting a Clan War is pointless IMO.
Now whoever assigned the mission. I have questions.......
The timing on the attack is so tight that it would be significantly more plausible if the spy had known where Akane was going before she did.
- Location
- Yes.
You know, ironically he never said that it would 100% would not have unfortunate consequences for Hazō or anyone that he likes, only that if it were the case would we vote for it.
EJ is a literal genie.
But it could have mattered in other circumstances (and did for following the trail anyway). Oh, and whoever assigned her on that mission, and right on the border of Rock I wonder... Oh, that's right, the Hagoromo.
Frankly, in case it wasn't clear, I am incredibly fed up with this cutthroat village that neither respects us, nor gives us anything of value. And it does not even protect us (see Orochimaru incident or Hagoromo shaenigans), while handing us a bazilion responsibilities. Why are we still in Leaf, again? We genuinely can leave and start building an actually sane place elsewhere, and have nothing more to gain for ourselves here. If one day we (core Team Uplift) pack up and all of us unsummon to the Seventh Path and go live with the dogs or whoever, or even the Akatsuki, then what, exactly, is Asuma going to do? As time passes, there are increasingly fewer disadvantages to even going Hidden Heaven, and increasingly more to staying in a village ruled by a triumvirate of a military dictator to whom we are a golden goose that he is merely reluctant to sacrifice, a sleezy snake psychopath, and a bunch of fundamentalist Clans, most of which are awful to one degree or another. Oh, and that village would sooner kill us than let us go, so its basically an abusive ex kind of relationship at this point, only on a larger scale.
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I'm not sure how it works exactly. I don't think the desk chunin get complete power over Leaf ninja like that.
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped do the desk chunin assign the missions to teams? Is it the number one suspect for selling Akane's itinerary to Rock, Ruka? She would have known about the mission before it was assigned to Akane, did she have the power to unilaterally assign it to Akane or did Akane choose the mission herself?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sweet! You can save word count by simply writing "do EJ's speech". No need to go into detail or repeat anything.
When you say "we", do you mean only Team Uplift or the Gōketsu in general? Logistics for transporting several hundred civilians through the wilderness will be challenging, and if you don't bring them with you then it's...not certain, but not improbable that some of them will be dead in six months due to suddenly having their legal protection and food/shelter supply stripped away.
- Location
- Yes.
I like how you have not yet said that [the speech] 100% would not have unfortunate consequences for Hazō or anyone that he likes.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
[X] Action Plan: Life Carries On
"There will not be a clan war in Leaf." Asuma successfully extracted that promise from us, but he saw how much Hazou wanted to reject it. The test is not over, though. Asuma will be watching to see if we carry through, and how we carry through. In this time where Hazou's emotions are running high and his desire for treason has spiked, his behaviour here will be a key insight into how much he can be trusted in the future.
It is part of Hazou's current characterization to enact petty aggression against the Hagoromo when he thinks he can get away with it (e.g. the knife he skysliced), so it would be very in-character for Hazou to let that seep into his Hokage-mandated apology, rebel just a bit against the spirit of Asuma's orders in order to get one more dig in at the people he hates. Frankly, while I accept that Hazoupilot will continue to do such things, I would rather he didn't. Characterization can be changed, specifically by voting in plans in accordance with the Hazou we strive towards rather than the Hazou we have.
This isn't a cold calculus of selling Hazou's soul for efficiency, if it seemed like that. While I do imagine there being tangible practical differences between the two approaches, fundamentally I consider that kind of spiteful hate to be a character flaw that I would rather Hazou grow beyond. This in no way diminishes the harm inflicted upon us by Ruka - on expectation if not in reality - or the fact that the Hagoromo need to be either dismantled as a power or twisted into something unrecognizable, but here and now there is nothing left to do. Asuma has already exerted his authority and taken control of the situation, the only option we have left is whether or not we indulge Hazou's vices and spite the spirit of Asuma's orders. Personally, I vote no.
"There will not be a clan war in Leaf." Asuma successfully extracted that promise from us, but he saw how much Hazou wanted to reject it. The test is not over, though. Asuma will be watching to see if we carry through, and how we carry through. In this time where Hazou's emotions are running high and his desire for treason has spiked, his behaviour here will be a key insight into how much he can be trusted in the future.
It is part of Hazou's current characterization to enact petty aggression against the Hagoromo when he thinks he can get away with it (e.g. the knife he skysliced), so it would be very in-character for Hazou to let that seep into his Hokage-mandated apology, rebel just a bit against the spirit of Asuma's orders in order to get one more dig in at the people he hates. Frankly, while I accept that Hazoupilot will continue to do such things, I would rather he didn't. Characterization can be changed, specifically by voting in plans in accordance with the Hazou we strive towards rather than the Hazou we have.
This isn't a cold calculus of selling Hazou's soul for efficiency, if it seemed like that. While I do imagine there being tangible practical differences between the two approaches, fundamentally I consider that kind of spiteful hate to be a character flaw that I would rather Hazou grow beyond. This in no way diminishes the harm inflicted upon us by Ruka - on expectation if not in reality - or the fact that the Hagoromo need to be either dismantled as a power or twisted into something unrecognizable, but here and now there is nothing left to do. Asuma has already exerted his authority and taken control of the situation, the only option we have left is whether or not we indulge Hazou's vices and spite the spirit of Asuma's orders. Personally, I vote no.
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Oh, I don't mean doing our Clan dirty like that, we took the mantle of responsibility there and we shouldn't just abandon people we swore to protect and take care of (if we can help it). But that does not mean we should be at the village and being forced into politicking / dangerous missions any longer, either, and it is my understanding that should not be happening anymore in the near future, so as far as the road to departure is concerned, my preferred course of action would be (in no particular order):
- Get Mari a scroll and make sure we have a potential S-ranker in our team in doing so (genjutsu + boss summon), so we are not pushed around.
- Ask Asuma for SC for Kagome, we need help in Sealing and it is a perfect Sealmaster jutsu. We would also like SJ rank for ourselves. These are stressful circumstances and he should be willing to let us have that much depending on how we phrase it, because both are reasonable requests.
- Untangle Hazo and Kagome from village chores so that the two can spend all their time on the Seventh Path, essentially to train full time, under the (true!) pretext that we need to work on the Great Seal and other things there. Hazou's presence is not really needed on the Human Path and if he was not swamped with Clan Head duties we would have a lot more time to actually do something productive towards the eventual goal of making our own place in the world, instead of meetings and such. Plus that'd give us the time to work on Project Necromancy to save Akane and beat Akatsuki to overturning the world order.
- Noburi and Kei can stay at the village - neither of them are going to get sent on missions or exposed to much danger, anyway. Noburi can act as the interim Clan Head in our absence, and he is able to fulfill that duty now that Tsunade is away.
- Make sure Yuno does not get sent on missions period, we can't afford to lose more people, and she is likely going to be the next target if it was Rock that killled Akane out of revenge. She could contribute in other ways, such as training village ninja in kenjutsu.
...
- And then, after some time passes, and Mari qualifies as a very weak essie (Zabuza/Kakashi/Gai-tier), Yuno is a proper combat jounin and Noburi, Kei and Hazo can all fight at the SJ level, and some of us can also summon a Boss instead of just jounin, and we are further boosted through Sealing research that Hazo and Kagome have gotten plentiful time to do, is when we actually do the departure thing. Maybe, just maybe, we can even get Akane back by then, too. If we are able to get Pain or Jiraiya on our side, things become a lot easier as well, but necromancy is not a necessity, and its hard to predict how that would go anyway.
But it is at this point, roughly that we can start thinking about and possibly even can afford to outright negotiate either leaving Leaf peacefully, or a real implementation of wider Uplift ideals into the Will of Fire, because we would have a position of enough power to do so. We can use FOOM knowledge as a bargaining chip as well at that point. Either way, for Uplift to work, we either need to become the lorekeeper clan for the Will of Fire over the Hagoromo and start really shaping the entire culture of Fire Country, or we need to leave and establish our own place. What we cannot do is indefinitely stay one of many clans at the momentary whims of unlucky missions and essies, be they malevolent or righteous tyrants.
Should Leaf start forcing us into a mess again before we can reach the second half of that, though, I would be in favour of packing Team Uplift up to another dimension after helping our civilians set up their lives, and going Action Plan : Hidden Heaven (utilzing the Seventh Path and approaching Akatsuki in the interim to ensure we survive Leaf's wrath).
Should Leaf really push us with its bullshit though, I'm ngl, I care less about this entire village than I care about any one person in our core group and if I could trade Leaf getting nuked while none of our core team and people like Ino and such are inside (aka another Collapse but worse) for getting Akane back, I would do that in a nanosecond. Yes, thousands would die, and still that matters less to me than one Noburi or one Kei or one Mari or one Kagome or one Ino or one Akane. My Hazo-pilot conscience would shed far fewer tears over that than Akane shed over that city she burned at uncle's kind dictator wannabe's orders. We don't owe most of these people anything, and the rest we owe little. So you can imagine that my preferred reaction to Akane's death is quite a lot more drastic than anything the thread is actually going to do, and so I won't go down that rabbit hole or write a plan for it. There would be no Clan War in Leaf. We would express a polite apology for the threat, and then the Hagoromo estate would just so happen to inexplicably disappear the next night in a mushroom cloud while we were training Harumitsu in our estate, with our involvement being entirely deniable. And Asuma could then shit rocks about an already dead Clan all he wanted.
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- Location
- Fifth Dimension
That just results in us being weak/the whipping boys.
It is not spiteful hatred, or a flaw. People should not strive to be docile as a sheep, especially in a deathworld. Altruistic kindness is not a valid answer to a society ran on petty and malevolent hatred fueled by nothing more than prejudice, because it results in being wholly unable to retaliate if attacked. And we should strive to be peaceful, not harmless. Being harmless to those who act in bad faith does nothing but invite abuse and breed contempt and disrespect. When societal push comes to shove and you have the power to act against it, you don't negotiate or turn the other cheek, you tear it to shreds, so that society learns that you can bite and stops barking. That, or you leave far away and just stop interacting with it. And only come back after a while, once you get into a position of power, to try and drag it screaming towards a better future.
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