- Location
- Bronx
[x] Noburi Training Plan: Medknow
[x] Kei Training Plan: Frozen Skein
[x] Kei Training Plan: Frozen Skein
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rational 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 open voting
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Feel better, friend.
There seems to be a growing consensus and it may drag the story in particular directions that I'm nervous about so I want to point out that it may be early to come to a definite conclusion. The evidence available is consistent with any of the following scenarios, among others:
* A team of ninja came into Leaf looking to capture and interrogate Leaf ninja, not caring who. They came across Akane's tracks, followed her, and attacked while her team was asleep. Unfortunately, she was too strong and they ended up having to kill her and her team. The battle was noisy enough that they immediately bounced in order to avoid the risk of being captured and interrogated, thereby revealing the AMITY violation.
* Rock had a kill order out on Akane and Yuno after they killed their Kage's husband. Immediately after the mission was assigned, someone in the bureaucracy (not Ruka) sent a message via faster-than-foot means saying where Akane would traveling. This could have been by reverse-summoner telephone, or carrier pigeon, or some chakra technique, or who knows. A team had been waiting on the border for months waiting for the message. They entered Fire, tracked and killed Akane, then immediately got out.
* A group of missing-nin came into Fire from Iron to raid civilian villages because there's money there, more than in Iron. They ran across Akane's tracks and thought this was likely on priors to be a genin team so it was an opportunity to get hold of skywalkers. Skywalkers are incredibly valuable for missing-nin, so it was worth the risk.
I'm not saying that any of these is correct, or that the players have/haven't come up with the correct answer. I'm pointing out that before decisions are made that will define the plot of the next 100 chapters in ways that I'm honestly nervous about, it's good to be sure you're avoiding tunnel vision.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'd just like to point out that this actually supports @Shrooms point. For this to happen their still has to be a leak at some point
- Location
- Texas
Down with the Nara, death to the traitors (except when we do it)! Evidence is for the weak!
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
Voting is closed.
1. I can't believe that we now know that carrier pigeon exist in the setting and that they are normal
2. What game is that from that female character is adorable
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The screenshot is from Hush Hush, a recently-released dating sim, although the character debuted in a previous game called Crush Crush.
- Location
- London
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Wikipedia said:
Welp, there goes the rest of my day.
We tracked them entering Fire right?
It was in the plan.
Did they not border hop using Skywalkers to break trail when they entered Fire?
If they did it is pretty strong evidence against the missing-nin theory
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Important tip: later stages/girls are functionally impossible to complete F2P without cheating (as in, it would take running the game for literal decades). The game stops you from cheating by setting your system clock to the future (it limits it to going up to a week forward, which is meaningless later on), but what it doesn't do is stop you from setting your system clock years back and then fast-forwarding it back to the present moment.
I can't believe that carrier pigeons aren't illegal as fuck. What possible reason could there be for allowing people to keep carrier pigeons in Leaf?
@Paperclipped @eaglejarl @Velorien, can we have a ruling on this? Are carrier pigeons a thing in the setting? Are they fire-breathing chakra carrier pigeons? What is their legal status in Mist and Leaf?
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Somewhere in the distance, Kagome has a feeling that something just got Shifted Out.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Minor PSA
All references to the term "purify" in the description of the Earthshaping Technique have been changed to "filter". This does not have any meaningful implications for Hazō or your plans and you should absolutely not worry about it.
Additionally, this week's Thursday update will be coming out early as it is, in accordance with the prophecy, an interlude. Voting will remain closed.
All references to the term "purify" in the description of the Earthshaping Technique have been changed to "filter". This does not have any meaningful implications for Hazō or your plans and you should absolutely not worry about it.
Additionally, this week's Thursday update will be coming out early as it is, in accordance with the prophecy, an interlude. Voting will remain closed.
- Location
- Yes.
[X] Armageddon Initiative
- Location
- United States
Does this strategy work in MfD as well? Seems like a great use for the β timeline…
"Sir, ES fixes our metal supplies forever."
"That's wonderful, Hazou! I'm so glad you finally made something that isn't a doomsday device!"
"Thank you sir, and on an unrelated note, the Hagoromo estate fell into a mysterious sinkhole."
"Aaaaaaand we're back."
"That's wonderful, Hazou! I'm so glad you finally made something that isn't a doomsday device!"
"Thank you sir, and on an unrelated note, the Hagoromo estate fell into a mysterious sinkhole."
"Aaaaaaand we're back."
- Location
- United States
You know, "Miner PSA" would have worked too =P
Eisenhelm
gran dutch of douchery
- Location
- Colombia
Too odvious, you want to put mercury in their incense burners to make it deniable.
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- Location
- Raleigh, NC
@eaglejarl @Paperclipped
Outstanding questions, if you are willing
1. Can civilians level trap making to anywhere near the level of ninja? (05/07/23)
2. Mari was on the verge of dissolving the merchant council a while ago. Did that come to fruition? (05/05/23)
3. How much of a pain/spoon cost is it for you when we check the difficulty of a seal? Is their any way to make it easier for you? There's a bunch of seals I would like to check the difficulty of but there is concern that it would be not be a nice thing to do. (05/05/23)
4. Could we get any info on dropouts from the first two years of academy? Is there any junction that we could tap those chakra capable people who cannot chop being a ninja?
5. Have we tapped out the entire supply of crippled ninja or are there still people off the mission lists that have functional chakra systems (could learn noncombat stuff such as sealing or ES)?
Thanks!
Outstanding questions, if you are willing
1. Can civilians level trap making to anywhere near the level of ninja? (05/07/23)
2. Mari was on the verge of dissolving the merchant council a while ago. Did that come to fruition? (05/05/23)
3. How much of a pain/spoon cost is it for you when we check the difficulty of a seal? Is their any way to make it easier for you? There's a bunch of seals I would like to check the difficulty of but there is concern that it would be not be a nice thing to do. (05/05/23)
4. Could we get any info on dropouts from the first two years of academy? Is there any junction that we could tap those chakra capable people who cannot chop being a ninja?
5. Have we tapped out the entire supply of crippled ninja or are there still people off the mission lists that have functional chakra systems (could learn noncombat stuff such as sealing or ES)?
Thanks!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Easy ones I can do off the top of my head. ponwog95 (Personal opinion, not word of god, but I'm 95% confident the other QMs will agree.)
2. Mari never wanted to dissolve the merchant council. It's far better to have it stay extant and simply rubber stamp everything the Gōketsu want to do while denying everything the Gōketsu's enemies want to do. She suborned some of their members but her control is not total.
3. Moderately. It helps that we don't have to come up with specifics but only a general category. If you want to help then propose edge cases for the seal's use and ways that it could be abused.
- Location
- United States
I think I might make an updated version of this now that Hazō, Asuma, Kagome, Enma, and Orochimaru are now all harem brothers through marriage to Kumokōgō….Inspired by the stalwart efforts of the Hivemind's shippers, I hereby present you with the latest Marked for Death shipping chart. Corrections and suggestions for improvement welcome.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
This makes as much sense as us slapping ourselves and then going to Asuma every time we come back from a walk outside the village to tell him "Lord Hokage sir, I defeated a dangerous sealmaster traitor and missing-nin in combat and brought him to Leaf"
And you say the players are munchkins
Hey, wait
[X] Policy Plan: Let's Do That
- Location
- United States
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Chapter 2β: In Which Hazō Introduces His Team to the Joys of Treason
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 2β: In Which Hazō Introduces His Team to the Joys of Treason
Kanna-sensei was alone. The time had come.
"Kanna-sensei, may I have a moment of your time?"
Kei's imminent villainy beggared belief. Mori Keiko was possessed of more faults than the ground after a battle between Earth specialist jōnin, but until this day, treachery had not been one of them. Setting aside the feebleness of her finest efforts at deception (the toy shark Ami had once promised Kei as a reward for successfully deceiving her lay unclaimed to this day), it was anathema to Kei to betray those who trusted her. Kanna-sensei trusted her. Kanna-sensei was kind—not specifically to Kei, but to anyone in her path, offering brief words of reassurance or consolation as she conducted her daily business (unlike Inoue-sensei, who actively assumed the role). Kanna-sensei was also Kei's direct superior out of the surviving jōnin, insofar as she had taken on Sumie-sensei's responsibilities in the aftermath of… events.
Kei had been denied any agency in becoming a missing-nin, left only with the meagre consolation that, as she had been helpless to avert her fate, at least she could not be held responsible for it either. Now, she prepared to betray her leader—all her leaders, in fact—of her own free will.
Could Kurosawa truly be a time traveller? It was improbable beyond words. That Kei could not conceive of a superior explanation for his stunning depth of knowledge might speak more to her incompetence than to the reality of the situation. It was infinitely more likely, for example, that Kurosawa was a genjutsu user who had warped her brain into blindly believing his claims where an external observer would instantly perceive the contradictions and impossibilities. A sensible shinobi would trust in the reassuring solidity of her priors and resolutely turn a deaf ear to his blandishments.
Yet while Kurosawa's flattery was obvious nonsense, his allegations of a premeditated crime could not be so easily dismissed. As a member of Logistics & Support, she had committed the team roster to memory on the day of her assignment. She had wondered at the time why an elite combat unit should contain so many diplomats and infiltrators, or specialists in wilderness survival when the contested zone was well-mapped and no particular threats (other than Leaf) were expected, or indeed an entire logistics squad to supplement Sumie-sensei, a respected logistician whose support plan had been complete before they ever departed Mist. Shikigami-sensei's presence she understood, and Kanna-sensei seemed to possess a ninjutsu for every occasion, but why was an I&S specialist jōnin present on this mission as opposed to someone like Captain Ayanami "the Storm" Takeshi (instead of whom they had received his underperforming genin brother)? Even their supplies, she now reflected, were remarkably well-suited to establishing a base in a swamp environment, considering its differences from the grassy plains of their intended destination.
Yet for all her pretence, Kei was not here out of rationality. She was here, shamefully, because she desired to believe. Even if her village truly had not deemed her fit only for a meaningless death, her past was ash, lost beyond return. Her future had been erased. In the present lay only death. Then, out of nowhere, Kurosawa pledged to triumph over that death in order to convince her. Could even one of them be saved as he asserted, much less the entire group? Kurosawa had planted something in her, a seed of hope that should not have survived for an instant in the arid soil of her despair, and now she fully expected him to take responsibility.
No, even concern for her own life was secondary to the true reason she was here—Kurosawa's final, most impossible claim. It was surely a lie, or at best a critical misapprehension of the facts. Ami was a loyal Mist shinobi, while Kei was the irredeemable polar opposite. She could have remained, and surrendered to the mercy of Captain Zabuza (assuming Shikigami-sensei permitted her to live). She could have gone to apologise to her ancestors in the Abyss, as was only proper for a traitor who wished to preserve a shred of honour. Instead, she fled, and was even now willingly furthering the diabolical plot of an arch-traitor (Shikigami-sensei, not Kurosawa, though at this point the argument could be made).
Kurosawa was, by weight of priors, deceiving her, insane, and/or in error about fundamental facts. If that was the case, following him would lead her only to the grave—but in a world without Ami, that was an acceptable outcome. On the other hand, if there was the tiniest chance that all was not lost, that Kei might bathe in that radiance again even for one more moment…
"What is it, Mori?" Kanna-sensei asked. She turned around, suspending the ninjutsu she had been using to excavate deeper into the cave and leaving a cube of rock with sides easily longer than Kei was tall hovering uneasily in the air behind her.
Kurosawa's untested promises aside, his greatest act had been to restore to Kei something she had believed lost forever: agency in the matter of her own survival. If all he desired in repayment was the exercise of that agency, then exercise it she would—even at the cost of the morality she had once believed in.
"I would like to bring certain materials that I inherited from Sumie-sensei to your attention," Kei said, brandishing a scroll that Kurosawa had spent nights dictating while she translated it into the dry staccato of Sumie-sensei's reports. "They were marked for the attention of Inoue-sensei, and I infer them to be research compiled by Sumie-sensei at her request. I attempted to submit them to Inoue-sensei earlier, but she dismissed me, stating she no longer required them."
Kanna-sensei accepted the scroll and began to browse. The cube behind her began to drift slowly towards the ground, like an Academy student settling in for a nap while the instructor was too focused on their lecture to notice. Without pausing her reading, Kanna-sensei frowned for a second, and it sheepishly returned to its original position.
"This isn't Sumie's brushwork."
"It is mine," Kei admitted. "The originals were… never retrieved from her body. I have attempted to reproduce them from memory as best I could, and apologise for the patchwork nature of the result."
"That was very thoughtful of you, Mori," Kanna-sensei said absently as she continued through the scroll with the reading speed of a document demigoddess. "Yuni yakuza… factions of Sarubetsu… the Mizutani hot springs… are these maps of Neck? Why in the Sage's name did Inoue want any of this?"
Kei made herself scarce while Kanna-sensei was still lost in her futile efforts to comprehend Kurosawa's mind.
-o-
At the same time…
Shikigami-sensei was alone. The time had come.
"Shikigami-sensei, can I talk to you for a second?"
Noburi was so far out of his depth he expected to see kraken passing by above him any minute now. Kurosawa was full of crap. His story made no sense. He knew too much he shouldn't, about Noburi's family, about his feelings… He even hinted at knowledge about the Vampiric Dew that should have obliged Noburi to immediately report him to Lord Masanobu—except that Lord Masanobu, just like the rest of the Wakahisa, was now out for Noburi's blood.
If Kurosawa had been a little older, Noburi would instantly have written him off as ANBU or secret police. There was no telling what Mist's scariest ninja knew about anyone or anything, and the rumours said they had perfect psych profiles on everyone from the youngest Academy student to the most untouchable clan lord. But Kurosawa had been in Noburi's class, and if he was a once-in-a generation child prodigy, he'd spent their Academy days hiding it incredibly well (though, then again, they weren't called the secret police for nothing…).
The trouble was, Mori believed him, and Mori was the smartest person Noburi had ever met. She had the brain to sort through all of Kurosawa's babbling and find the contradictions that proved him to be a fraud, and instead she'd decided to play his game as if he really was a visitor from the future. Then she'd asked Noburi to help, and placed her life in his hands.
Noburi would do whatever it took to protect her, and that left him with no choice.
Shikigami-sensei stood up from the trap array he'd been in the middle of setting up in the middle of an innocent-looking reedbed.
"Wakahisa? What are you doing back already? There's still plenty of daylight left. Did somebody get injured?"
"No, sir," Noburi said. "I have something you need to hear about right away."
"What's that?"
"It's Inoue Mari, sir," Noburi said. "She's planning to betray you and run away with a team of genin."
Noburi had had plenty of time to weigh his loyalties and his options during the team's days of waiting. Kurosawa claimed to know for a fact that Captain Zabuza would attack, with Leaf backup, but not when, and had been dithering over whether it was best to move sooner, and try to be done before Captain Zabuza had a chance to finish his preparations, or to wait in order to minimise changes to the future which could ruin his predictive powers. Noburi had reluctantly explained that there was a much more sensible reason to wait before putting Kurosawa's bonkers plan into action: if they were planning to trick jōnin, the elite of the elite, they needed time to build trust. That was why Team Kurosawa (dammit) had spent the recent days following Noburi's advice, acting like model genin (and Kurosawa's supposed foreknowledge had made their missions run a lot more smoothly) while slipping up just enough to earn sympathy instead of frustration. It had also meant sitting there watching Mori and Kurosawa keep getting closer while Noburi couldn't even come up with a topic of conversation that held her attention.
Now, it was time for Noburi to take advantage of this delay.
Shikigami-sensei studied him with narrow, suspicious eyes. "Wakahisa, you had better be able to back that kind of accusation."
Noburi took a deep breath and stepped out onto the invisibly-thin ice of Kurosawa's plan.
"She came to talk to me earlier, sir. She said this was never a suicide mission. She said you'd set the whole thing up because you wanted your own hidden village from the start, and we were both just victims of your ambition."
Little fires of anger danced in Shikigami-sensei's eyes, evidence in favour of accusations Noburi couldn't stand to believe.
"I hope you know that's bullshit, Wakahisa. If I wanted to go missing, I'd have done it years ago instead of coming up with some crazy mass kidnapping conspiracy, and if I'd been planning to build my own village, I'd have done it with people whose loyalty I'd already earned the hard way. Did she say anything else?"
"She said... She said she'd taken matters into her own hands, but she wanted to take the people she trusted most with her when she left," Noburi said. "She said I could stick around for Juraya and his toads to take care of, or I could join the winning team and never have to worry about Leaf again."
Shikigami-sensei went very still. "Jiraiya and his toads. You're sure that's what she said."
"Jiraiya. Right. Yes, sir."
So that was why Mori had given Kurosawa that strange look. Noburi didn't know whether to appreciate the clever trick or be pissed off that Kurosawa didn't trust him to lie convincingly without help.
"…that backstabbing bitch!" Shikigami-sensei crushed the water chestnut caltrop he was holding in his fist, and it didn't even look like it hurt. "She sold us all out. I knew something felt off about her. You did good coming to me with this, Wakahisa."
He turned back towards the main camp, then paused.
"Why did you come to me? I know what Inoue's capable of. If she wanted to turn a kid like you, she should've been able to do it in a heartbeat."
Noburi looked down as if he couldn't meet Shikigami-sensei's eyes (and he couldn't, just for a different reason). "There was a big part of me that wanted to believe I was special to her like she said. But deep down, I know she only wants me for my barrel, just like everyone else. What else have I got to offer someone like her? Shikigami-sensei, you're the first person who told me I could be a strong ninja on my own terms. You said I could be a jōnin. If I have to pick who to trust, I'd rather pick someone who believes in me."
Shikigami-sensei laid a firm hand of paternal approval on Noburi's shoulder. "You're a good kid, Wakahisa. You'll go far, and I'll damn well make sure of it. So do you know where Inoue is now?"
It was so, so hard to believe Kurosawa over Shikigami-sensei, even with Mori's backing. What if Noburi was being one of those idiot ninja from the Academy stories who got his whole team killed because he'd trusted a beautiful woman he barely knew over his Mizukage-appointed team leader?
But what if they were right, and him changing his mind now would get everyone killed? Even if Kurosawa was lying about who he was and how he knew what he knew, his predictions so far had panned out (Noburi would never forget what happened with the chakra alligator), and Mori was so confident they were all doomed if they kept going the way they were that it hurt to hear.
Noburi made his choice and pulled away. "Please don't hurt her!"
Shikigami-sensei glowered.
Inoue-sensei was really sweet, wickedly funny, and impossibly hot, but it was still a little hurtful how easily Shikigami-sensei bought the brainless horny teen act.
"I, uh, mean, if you fight her, you might get injured, and that'd leave Kanna-sensei doing three jōnin's work. That's all. Sir."
Shikigami-sensei looked vaguely upward for a second, as if weighing Kanna-sensei's leadership potential in his head. He sighed.
"I guess you'll grow out of it," he said ambiguously. "Go get me Kanna, and spread the word: every ninja in the village needs to assemble in front of the main cave ASAP."
The rod was cast. It was too late for takebacks. If it wasn't for Mori, Noburi would have turned Kurosawa in the second he realised he was serious about his plot to destroy the only home Noburi had left. Instead, he'd trusted Kurosawa with their lives… and he swore that if Kurosawa betrayed them, his death would make what happened to Team Ayanami look like an all-expenses-paid holiday in Hot Springs.
-o-
At the same time…
Mari was alone. The time had come.
"Inoue-sensei, can I speak to you in private?"
Mari, showing not the tiniest hint of surprise at his request out of nowhere, let him lead her away from the unconscious genin she'd just finished bandaging. She stopped when they reached the edge of the encampment, but he beckoned her on.
"Sorry, Inoue-sensei, but this is something I really don't want anyone to overhear."
Mari followed, now radiating alertness, as he brought her to a hill from which they had line of sight to the camp. He stood in front of her, facing towards the camp, meaning she was facing away from it as she looked at him.
"What is it, little Hazō?"
It seemed like a lifetime away now, but Hazō remembered that Mari had actually started calling him by name long before Hidden Swamp, back when she was friends (or whatever passed for friends with the Heartbreaker) with his team leader, Riakutā Mako. He'd never followed up on Mako-sensei, come to think of it, or the rest of his original genin team, but then again, it wasn't like they'd been friends so much as stuck with each other in the genin squad equivalent of an oubliette guard tower.
No, he couldn't let himself get distracted. Hazō's was by far the most dangerous part of Operation Future Perfect. Sure, Noburi could get in a lot of trouble if his only-mostly-true report wasn't believed. However, if Hazō messed up, Mari could decide he was a threat to her survival, in which case she would probably kill him on the spot. He'd even made sure there were no witnesses. He had to get everything just right, without alienating her or losing her interest or making himself seem like a liability, and he had to do it all without lying because she was Mari and there was no telling what subtle cues she might pick up on when she was at her most attentive.
Still, failure wasn't an option. She was his Mari by metaphysical extension, and Team Uplift, old or new, left no ninja behind.
"Inoue-sensei," he began, "what do you think our odds of survival are out here?"
Mari visibly relaxed. Her gaze turned gentle and sympathetic.
"Oh, Hazō," she said. "I figured it would be something like this. Listen, I know things have been hard ever since we found out about the suicide mission. I know it must hurt knowing none of us can go home again. There's nothing wrong with feeling that way. All of us do, even me. There's especially nothing wrong with being scared. We've lost some good people, and the swamp is the most dangerous place many of us have ever been in. If you weren't even a little bit scared, I'd figure you were either crazy or a chakra alligator in disguise.
"But we're going to survive, Hazō. Shikigami is a brilliant man who knows exactly what he's doing, and Kanna and I are no slouches either. Then we have all the experienced chūnin, with their many skills which all add up to a single unstoppable force, and we have genin like you, brimming with potential that's going to be realised all the faster in a challenging environment. We're going to survive, and then we're going to flourish. The Village Hidden in the Swamp may seem like a distant idea now, but soon enough, we'll be a power to be reckoned with, and you'll be proud to be one of its founding members. All you have to do is be brave enough to get through these first few weeks. We'll get to know the swamp and its dangers, and how to avoid them or defeat them. If Captain Zabuza or anyone else comes for us, I promise you we will use that knowledge to take them down and protect our independence. Our odds of survival might not be a hundred percent, because that doesn't happen to ninja, but they're a lot better than they look, and before long they'll be even better than they were back home. Nobody in Hidden Swamp is going to disappear people for saying the wrong thing or send them on suicide missions."
Mari was so good. If Hazō didn't already know she was planning to fake her death and run in a matter of days, he'd have been taken in by the sheer conviction shining through her voice, time travel or no time travel.
This wasn't going to go anywhere until he got her to show her true colours.
"I'm not sure I agree, Inoue-sensei," he said. "Captain Zabuza is on his way. There's no question about that. Yagura doesn't forgive or forget betrayal. He'll keep sending hunter-nin after us until we're dead, even after it stops being a rational use of resources. Once Captain Zabuza gets here, he'll know better than to charge headfirst into the swamp because he's a veteran hunter-nin, so he'll go to Leaf. The second Leaf find out they've got an organised group of twenty-seven missing-nin on their doorstep, they'll be throwing people and resources at him to make sure the problem gets solved—and they can kick him out of Fire again—immediately, even if they have to toss their current mission schedule out the window.
"They consider themselves the strongest village, Inoue-sensei. A bunch of fugitives that couldn't even cut it as Mist ninja has nothing they want more than they want total control of their own territory, plus allying with us would make Yagura foam at the mouth and trigger the coming war between Mist and Leaf—which they don't want until they feel they have a major military advantage, and at that point they'll have even less use for us than they do now. They might even send somebody like Jiraiya of the Three when they hear we have three jōnin plus a bunch of other ninja who might scatter all over Fire if they're not wiped out quickly."
"That's… an impressive analysis," Mari said. "Not bad at all. But you underestimate us. By the time Leaf is an issue, we'll have our feet under us. We have a formidable force here, and even once Leaf finds out about us, they won't move carelessly. We have plenty of room to negotiate and plenty to offer, and you'd better believe we have some top-notch negotiators." She winked at him.
"Trust your jōnin, Hazō. We have thought this through, and we've got plenty of other plans and considerations that we'll share with everyone as soon as the time is right."
Hazō imagined, in a different alternate timeline, Kurosawa Hazō trusting his jōnin and walking away with a heart full of faith in Inoue-sensei. He'd be dead within the fortnight. He couldn't let himself forget that this was the Mari he was dealing with right now, the woman who'd only saved them because they were in the right place at the right time, and then only because Kei was there. Somewhere in Mari's future lay the person he would love and trust with his life and the lives of his loved ones. Here and now, Mari was comfortable leaving him to die—if he didn't provoke her into killing him herself on her way out.
This Mari wanted him to go away and live in blissful ignorance until the day death came to Hidden Swamp, and that meant she wasn't going to make this easy. Hazō couldn't afford to take the time to wear her down, not if he wanted his part of Operation Future Perfect to have finished by the time Kei and Noburi arrived. Fortunately, he and Kei had prepared an excellent conversation flowchart, and he was prepared to speedrun this part if he had to. (Speedrunning was a traditional Kurosawa racing competition where everyone independently ran the same obstacle course and recorded their best time into the Iron Nerve, then gathered to replay it for verification and to show off the clever tricks they'd come up with for shaving just a few extra seconds off their time. Obviously, Hazō had never been invited to participate, but its spirit of optimisation delighted him.)
"Inoue-sensei," he said. "Allow me to save us both some time. Staying here is suicide. I've gathered a team of trustworthy ninja and we're ready to leave on my word. Would you like to join us?"
After the briefest delay, Mari laughed. "Did Shikigami put you up to this? Sorry, Hazō, but you're a good decade too young to try a loyalty test on me. Honestly, I'm a little insulted that you tried. I could have split off at any time, you know, if I thought this whole thing was a bad idea. An elite jōnin like me can make it anywhere. Instead, I stuck around and went into the Swamp of Death with everyone else. I'm still here, and I'm going to keep being here
–for you and everyone else–because we're comrades and that's what comrades do. Now, was that everything you wanted to talk about?"
"There are three of us," Hazō pressed on, "and we happen to have the best Bloodline Limits in the swamp. Mori's Frozen Skein is the ultimate safety net. She can optimise our use of limited resources and analyse our plans to prevent mistakes, because missing-nin can't afford to make mistakes. Wakahisa's Vampiric Dew is the ultimate power multiplier. When we run, we can outrun anyone because we can afford to boost our speed with chakra all day long. When we fight… what can an elite jōnin do if she knows she can spend all the chakra she wants and be full again in seconds?"
"And what about you?" Mari asked sceptically. "What kind of game-changing contribution do you offer with your ability to control your body a bit better than other genin?"
The discovery that the Iron Nerve was tied to the body rather than the mind had been one of the nastier surprises of time travel. Hazō no longer moved like a hardened chūnin with a secondary (tertiary? Quaternary?) specialisation in taijutsu, and all those seals he'd downloaded instead of memorising hadn't made the journey with him either. On the other hand, he suspected bad things would have happened if the Iron Nerve had reflexively forced his feeble genin body to imitate movements designed for a stronger, more flexible, and differently-proportioned one, and there was no way Mari wouldn't have noticed the sudden change in Kurosawa Hazō's body language either.
"I'm the planner," Hazō said with the confidence of a man whose brilliant mind had, if one mapped it statistically over an extended period of time, got his family out of more trouble than it had got them into. "It's why I lead the team."
"Colour me unimpressed," Mari said. "Your plan was to bring me out here alone so you could talk to me about betraying the group? If I'm loyal and decide you're a traitor, I could kill you right here. If I'm a traitor and decide you're in my way, I could kill you right here. Go back to camp and leave the plotting to the adults, Hazō."
"That wasn't the plan," Hazō corrected her. "That was just the introduction. Turn around, Inoue-sensei. What do you see?"
Mari turned around. From the top of the hill, they had a commanding view of the encampment.
"Are they… Are they getting ready to move out? What the hell? Shikigami never breathed a word of this."
"While we've been talking," Hazō explained, "my teammates have been proving to Shikigami-sensei that you sold us all out to Leaf. From the fact that everyone's preparing to abandon the swamp, I'm guessing Shikigami-sensei believed them. If you go down there, he'll probably kill you on sight. After all, if you get too close, you can disable him with genjutsu before he knows it."
His spine screamed as it impacted the tree behind him. Mari's hand was closed around his throat, the tiniest sliver of pressure away from choking him to death.
"You little shit!" Mari growled.
Mari was going to kill him. He'd miscalculated. He'd made himself a liability. No, a threat. She was going to fake her death and run—only this time he wasn't an innocent, obedient child. He was an enemy who'd put her life in danger. The beta timeline was about to end, and then Kei and Noburi would die, and the Dragons would soon take the rest. What had made him think that a little foreknowledge would be enough to pull this off?
No. They were counting on him. He couldn't give up. Jiraiya. Captain Zabuza. Itachi. Orochimaru. It was almost harder to list the S-rankers he'd met who hadn't come within an inch of killing him at some point. He was still standing. There was still time.
"Plan..." Hazō choked out, "was to leave you... two choices... Everybody wins... or everybody loses."
Even if Hazō died, Kanna-sensei had his route now. There was no guarantee that Shikigami-sensei would take it (and they didn't have time for Hazō to win his trust as a strategist and persuade him the honest way), but if he did, his group would be out of Fire before Leaf had time to marshal its forces. Then it would just be Captain Zabuza, chasing them through a series of countries that were either outright hostile to village ninja or at least tolerant of anonymous ninja travellers who didn't cause trouble. They'd have to figure out their own way across the ocean, but senior jōnin would know the "terrain" and Mist's patrol routes, and how to take advantage of the fact that water didn't hold tracks. If they managed to make it as far as Neck, their sheer numbers would give them weight in negotiations with the local clans, and if they managed to secure any alliances, even Captain Zabuza might be forced to back off instead of starting a war on the wrong side of the world.
"After what you just pulled," Mari said through her teeth, "I'm struggling to see one single reason why I shouldn't just kill you and be on my way."
"I do," Hazō said.
Mari stepped back. Hazō fell to his knees.
"You get one shot. Tell me why I should let you live, ten words or less."
Hazō slowly levered himself up, his hand instinctively reaching for his throat as if to make sure it was still intact.
He could do it in six.
"My mother thinks you're a monster."
Hazō had seen Mari at her most vulnerable, and that was the only reason he didn't miss the tiny flicker of raw emotion that crossed her face.
He hadn't been sure, until the last second, that the words would mean anything to Mari. He'd spent enough time with her and Ami to have an inkling of the horrors that Mist I&S specialists faced on every mission, body and mind. Nobody who couldn't shrug off mere criticism from a distant colleague, however harsh, would survive to become an I&S jōnin. Yet for some reason, Kurosawa Hana had been able to plunge Mari into crippling misery in a single conversation. For some reason, even though he knew they'd never been close, Mum's opinion had weight. And much as he hated it, right now he needed Mari to be reeling, because if she cut off his speech too soon, it was all over.
"She calls you the Heartbreaker," he pressed on, "a hollow mockery of a human being who cares about no one but herself and ruins lives for fun. She thinks you could never look after another human being unless you were exploiting them so you could feel good about yourself.
"You're not supposed to be the kind of woman who signs up for Shikigami-sensei's plan instead of running to save herself at the first opportunity, or when she sees just how terrible a home the Swamp of Death will make. You're not supposed to be the kind of woman who dedicates her prodigious talents to helping children who've got nothing to offer her cope with shame and homesickness and terror and despair. That says to me that my mother's wrong. You're not the Heartbreaker right now—or at least, you're trying not to be.
"You can run away on your own. It might even be the best decision for your personal survival. But you'll be alone, maybe forever. You know exactly where that leads."
Slowly, so as not to trigger Hazō-killing jōnin reflexes, he held out his hand.
"Or you could join us. My team's purpose isn't just to survive. It's to build loyalty and trust. Eventually, something more. It's to find a better reason to live than killing people before they can kill us."
He let a hint of the warmth, of the love and longing he felt for the Mari he'd left behind, flow into his voice.
"Be one of us, Inoue Mari. Earn loyalty and trust. Eventually, something more. Find a better reason to live.
"I know part of you thinks that's foolish and naive. I know you didn't get this far by believing things just because they sounded nice. But I also know that you just saw me overturn the fates of twenty-seven ninja with nothing more than the pair of genin I was randomly assigned. Lend me your strength, the strength of a woman who walked through hell and came out a jōnin, and together we will work miracles. Isn't that a better gamble than seeing if you can beat the Heartbreaker with no one but yourself to fight for?"
Mari didn't move.
"Who are you?" she whispered. "Really?"
Hazō gave a conqueror's smile. "I'm Hazō. Son of Hana and Shinji. Formerly of Hidden Mist. It's just that I didn't realise how much I was still holding back."
Mari held his gaze. Her eyes were bright green.
Hazō would never know, but he was sure that in that moment, they had an entire duel of interrogation under Truth Lost in the Fog.
But a flowchart was practically a list, Hazō's jōnin-tier specialisation (at least until he got sealing back), and if you couldn't lie, then you couldn't be caught in a lie either.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," Mari said as she took Hazō's hand. "The chronicles will record this as the moment Inoue Mari went certifiably insane—or they would if I was such a lousy ninja that my name ended up known to history.
"So what happens now, Captain Hazō?"
"Now, Inoue," Hazō said as he felt his fingers close around victory, "we finish gathering the team and start working miracles."
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- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
In the midst of all our wild and crazy plans that we workshop and debate on the player side of things before ever seeing in the narrative, it's really cool to see a plan come together like this with all the details hidden from us. Beta Hazou has no rails and will not share his secrets until it's time for the spotlight to shine, and it's great.