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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Orisha91 said:
It warms my heart to see the true word spread.
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Velorien said:
"Gotta bring new life into the world before you can massacre it. Everythin' from conception to death belongs to Lord Jashin, and it's his priests' job to make both ends as fun as possible.
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Protecting civilians is Pro-Jashin, so is killing them. No need to feel guilty when a god wills it.

Giving Ino the Iron Nerve is also Pro-Jashin, if you know what I mean.


 
If the plan includes Hazou working on Minato's seals, I'd he likely to vote for it. No strong feelings either way at the moment.
 
Oneiros said:
Just curious have we decided to not investigate the potential tower leak that could have caused Akane's death?
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Once I have planwriting capacity back, I'd like to have a high-security sit-down with Kei and Mari where we ask what the fuck is going on because it seems like Shikamaru and Naruto missed some pretty obvious stuff in their investigation. Based on their reaction, I think we go from there. Discussing it with Naruto would be a good next step - he's the one with the knowledge of the paperwork in his head and I don't trust Shikamaru.

I'd also, honestly, be down to ask Jashin some questions about Akane's death. We can channel some 'kill those fuckers' vibes and flip some ryo.
 
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Chapter 596: A Gem of a Woman, Part 1
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    • Hazō could hear the vicious howling of the boreal wind outside even through the trembling shutters. The days had been cold since Akane died, with little sunlight to soften the winter chill—or perhaps it simply wasn't registering because it was so inferior to the real thing. The nights, when Akane should have been with him after a long day of work, were even colder. Tonight was cold even by those standards, and ironically that one was because of Akane. She'd been the one to point out something that had passed him by, as someone who'd gone from being too poor or missing to eat at restaurants to being a wealthy clan ninja whose every wish they hastened to obey, with pretty much nothing in between. She'd pointed out that when a restaurant owner received a clan messenger and had to decide between the windfall of a fully booked restaurant for a night on the one hand and inconveniencing and potentially offending a clan lord on the other, it was no choice at all, even if that meant cancelling existing civilian reservations with little warning and turning away dozens of people who'd otherwise enjoy that restaurant's food just as much as Hazō and his date did.

    That was why, tonight, Hazō was an ordinary diner, and as someone who, again, had little experience of ordinary dining, he'd neglected to come early enough to snag a table by the fire, and was now instead enjoying the cryogenic hospitality of a window seat in winter. Ino, turning up fashionably late, couldn't have failed to notice, but was too polite to comment.

    "How are you holding up?" Hazō asked after performing the proper observances (literally, as they involved a long, appreciative glance that acknowledged Ino's latest beautiful dress, her flawlessly-chosen accessories, and the general mesmerising attractiveness of his girlfriend).

    Ino gave a wan smile. "Would you believe me if I told you it was business as usual?"

    Hazō didn't, which was why he didn't say anything and waited for her to continue.

    "No," she said, "I don't believe me either. The thing is, it's supposed to be business as usual. I lost Dad and a bunch of other relatives at Nagi Island, then half the clan to the Great Collapse, then all the people I sent to their deaths during the war, plus all the usual mission casualties, and I mourned but kept going through all of that because that's just what you do. I shouldn't be feeling this way about one more person who isn't even a Yamanaka. It's not fair to everyone else, and it's not how a clan head should feel."

    Hazō reached over without thinking and took her hand.

    "I don't think that's how it works, Ino. You don't get to choose who you care about, or how much, or how badly losing them hits you. Blaming yourself for it is… well, I was going to say unproductive, but that's such a cold word. Let's be simple and say it's a bad idea and if I catch you doing it again, I'll… I'll write you terribly embarrassing love poetry and read it out in public where people who know you can hear."

    "You wouldn't."

    "Why," Hazō said, "I can feel a limerick coming on already. There once was a lady from Leaf, whose pulchritude beggared—"

    "Fine!" Ino exclaimed, blushing. "Gōketsu Hazō, you're a diabolical fiend. Is this really how you console your lover in a time of grief?"

    "It's a core teaching of the Gōketsu," Hazō said, "that enough explosives can solve any problem. Trust me, as someone who's studied the work of Namikaze Minato in excruciating depth, I can come up with poetry that'll blow you away with its awfulness at a moment's notice."

    Ino sighed.

    "Thanks, Hazō. Can I… Can I confess something to you?"

    Hazō nodded attentively.

    "This isn't just losing Akane," Ino said. "I mean, of course it hurts to lose her—she was my best friend; nobody else compares. But I think what's really hit me, what's made it more than just another loss, was losing a future. I don't know what relationships like the one we had turn into when they grow up. The only model I've got is what happened to the Shikamaru/Kei/Tenten triad, and I don't think there's anything any of us could have done to make our relationship spin that far out of control. But I wanted to find out, and now I won't. I'm very, very glad you're still here, Hazō. Don't get me wrong on that. But I feel like something's gone, some path forward that isn't just Clan Lady Yamanaka Ino having a great boyfriend, and I'll never get it back and I'll never even find out what it was I lost."

    "…yeah," Hazō said, in the absence of being able to say much else. If she didn't already believe in Project Necromancy and Akane's imminent rescue, then bringing it up right now, with no new evidence and no proof of concept, would only hurt rather than help—no matter how confident Hazō was that he'd make that future happen after all (though, hopefully, it would come out a little more manageable than the Kittensphere).

    From Ino's expression, something more was needed, but any sincere commiseration would be a lie. Hazō could lament Akane being dead. He couldn't lament her being gone forever.

    Hazō took the coward's way out.

    "Actually," he said, "Ino, do you think you could give me some advice on something?"

    "Sure," Ino said after an uncomfortable second of conversational derailment. "What is it?"

    "It's about the Hagoromo," Hazō said. "After the Ruka incident,"—Ino, who must have been involved in directing the Yamanaka experts involved in the inquiry, gave a nod—"Asuma suggested getting Hagoromo teachers to come help out at the GED to try and clean away some of the bad blood between our clans through exposure. Do you think it's likely to work? Part of me worries that inviting the Hagoromo into my home, into my projects, is just going to lead to a disaster, but it's not like I can sit back and hope this conflict sorts itself out without some kind of major effort either."

    Ino pulled back her hand as she considered.

    "It seems lukewarm," Ino said. "The GED is just things like maths and literacy, right? There's no reason why Gōketsu and Hagoromo teachers would need to interact much if they don't want to. Come to the compound, do the job, go home. If they do interact, building familiarity is a useful tool, but it's going to blow up the second anybody brings up any ideology you and they disagree on, which is most of it. Even when there are things like the Will of Fire which every Leaf ninja agrees on, the Hagoromo teachers might say the Gōketsu don't believe in the Will of Fire to begin with, which is such an absurd idea that I don't know where you'd start proving them wrong.

    "Also," she added, "the GED is for civilians, right? So they're not going to be the clansmen who joined you because they believe in your Uplift ideals. They're going to be random people who've been brought up to believe that the Hagoromo are a moral authority validated by every Hokage in history. If they start getting exposed to Hagoromo teachings where they normally wouldn't be, or if they have to watch your Gōketsu teachers start sparring with the Hagoromo ones in front of them, you might not like the side they take."

    Hazō winced. "Those were my fears as well. I get where Asuma's coming from, but I can't help thinking that the Hagoromo just aren't ready to play nice the way he thinks. Ruka might not have been plotting Akane's death, but she shrugged it off without a second's concern, like Akane wasn't a fellow Leaf ninja whose loss was a blow to the entire village. You don't get to be buddies with someone who thinks you'd be better off dead just because you work the same job.

    "Is it going to be this way forever, Ino? Will they just keep going after us, again and again, whenever they have plausible deniability? Would it help if we de-escalated, or would we just be disarming ourselves in the face of the enemy?"

    "There's your problem, Hazō," Ino said after a second. "You've got a missing-nin idea of what an enemy is, not a clan head idea. Yes, technically, the Hagoromo are your enemy. You want incompatible things, and both of you would be much happier with each other gone. But that's not how fellow Leaf clans do things. You think the Ino-Shika-Chō don't have enemies? I can't count the number of times we've butted heads with the Hyūga over the course of Leaf history. But butting heads means just that. Animals butt heads to establish dominance, not to kill. When clans fight in Leaf, it means weakening each other in relative terms. It means undermining business interests, it means cutting off opportunities, it means stealing the kind of secrets that aren't an existential threat. It means stopping before you cross the line that makes a clan less capable of serving Leaf. I know you were never taught that, so up to a point you get a free pass, but after two years in power, I really think that point's come and gone."

    She held up her hands to forestall Hazō's obvious objection.

    "I know. Lord Hagoromo doesn't have that excuse and he should know better. Him escalating the way he does is a disgrace and honestly embarrassing to watch for anyone with a shred of political training. The problem is, whenever he escalates, so do you. This whole vendetta thing started when he insulted Kei at a Clan Council meeting, right? Look where it is now. Lord Hagoromo couldn't have done that alone. Frankly, I'm not sure he'd even be capable of thinking big enough to want to destroy another clan if he wasn't led up that path through gradual escalation."

    "So what's the solution?" Hazō asked. "Even if we weren't at war once, we are now. They've hurt us. We've hurt them. Do we carry on like this forever? I feel like it's natural to hate them, with their bigotry and intolerance and utter refusal to care about people's feelings and even the future of the world over their beloved moth-eaten scrolls of doctrine—but this constant cycle of hatred isn't making anything better. It's not a solution. It's just a regular source of problems, and sometimes I think if Asuma didn't periodically step in to shut down the feedback loop, it would keep going until it destroyed us both."

    He looked down.

    "Honestly," he said quietly, "it's worse than that. I look at Akane, and I look at myself, and I think: suppose we destroy the Hagoromo. Will I feel the same way about the next group of people whose beliefs I can't tolerate? Will I hate them because they hate me—and I think there are a lot of people who'll hate me once they realise Uplift is going invalidate every way of life that relies on a broken world—and have this same relationship every time? Am I conditioning myself to cycles of hatred?"

    "I don't have the answers, Hazō," Ino said. "The unwritten rules of clan behaviour are supposed to stop this sort of thing happening, but it's too late for that now. But if I had to think through the increasingly few tools you have for handling this thing…

    "Have you tried talking to the Hagoromo?"

    Hazō stared at her blankly. "What do you mean?"

    "Literally," Ino said. "Just talking to them. Asking them what they believe and why. I mean, I'm one of those people who were brought up to respect the Hagoromo. Most of us are. I don't mean respecting Hagoromo Ritsuo specifically. I hate that man. He's an incompetent idiot who keeps hurting people I care about, and I might not literally want him dead, but I also wouldn't weep if he got caught having carnal relations with a sheep and never had a voice in public life again.

    "I also don't mean respecting everything about the Hagoromo. For instance, getting to know Kei and Tenten has given me a very different perspective on a lot of Hagoromo teachings about gender and sexuality, largely the perspective that they're bullshit. But a lot of those teachings are tied into the beliefs that make the people of Leaf who they are, and rejecting them because you only hear them coming from people like Hagoromo Ritsuo is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And since you only hear the Hagoromo teachings when Lord Hagoromo is busy using them to talk about how awful the Gōketsu are, it's no wonder you think they're all terrible.

    "While I'm on a roll with caveats, I also don't mean accepting what they tell you. You can walk away as convinced that they're idiots as when you started. Just… let them see you engage. Let them see you disagree with their teachings for reasons that you've told them, human reasons that aren't 'because the Gōketsu are evil and hate the Will of Fire'. Maybe you'll even open the communication channels enough to explain Uplift to them, who knows, and then they can walk away still thinking you're an idiot, but at least they'll understand how and why. Or maybe you'll get through to someone. You do have a way with speeches, and no clan is monolithic.

    "That's what I'd do in your place. Don't offload the heavy lifting onto some Gōketsu schoolteachers and hope they rub off on their counterparts. Use your silver tongue. Use whichever clansmen have the coolest heads and a bit of charisma. Imagine how Akane would've handled it."

    Hazō gave her a sceptical look.

    "You really think that would work?"

    "No idea," Ino said lightly. "But it's a core teaching of the Yamanaka that when you want to end a conflict with someone peacefully, you talk to them. It's by no means easy, but it is simple. Frankly, I'm a little worried about your reputation with the Hokage if he decided not to suggest that first. The number of times he cut off a conflict in the team by sitting us down and forcing us to talk to each other…"

    Ino shuddered, from which Hazō inferred all sorts of things about all three of the current ISC clan heads.

    "Thanks, Ino," Hazō said. Then, both because it was good timing for an expression of gratitude and because it would temporarily scrub the image of having to talk to Hagoromo Ritsuo in a respectful fashion out of his mind, he reached for the pack sitting at his feet under the table.

    "I happen to have a present for you, and not just because you're incredibly insightful and a national treasure yourself."

    Ino preened, but subtly.

    He brought forth the mirror, a work of art made with materials never before seen in this world. The surface was perfect, supernaturally-even reflective metal (which had taken aeons to make with Earthshaping's ability to only work metal in sheets thinner than his patience with Lord Hagoromo). The handle was a single silvery gem Hazō had invented himself by combining corundum with mica until he found something he thought Ino would like. Every element had been condensed and toughened until the Sage himself would struggle to break it and claim the seven years' bad luck he was so very due.

    Ino studied it, turning it back and forth in her hands in growing awe. Absently, she brushed back a single strand of blonde hair clearly visible in her undistorted reflection.

    "Hazō, this is incredible," she said. "I'm Leaf's finest connoisseur of mirrors, and I've never seen one this good. It must have cost a small country. Where did you get it?"

    Hazō gave a slow, satisfied smile. "I figured nothing on the market would be capable of properly reflecting your beauty, so I made it myself."

    Ino boggled.

    "You're kidding."

    "Nope."

    "But the clarity… and this handle… what even is this?"

    Hazō had been worried about what to do if she didn't ask.

    "The purest Inoite," he said. "You're the only woman in the world who's ever seen this gem—and you can keep it that way if you like, or it can eventually make its way onto the market, and your name won't fade from this world for as long as there's a jewel trade."

    Silence.

    More silence.

    Hazō was starting to worry he'd broken Ino. Akane was going to have words for him when she came back from the dead.

    "You're saying you made this gem? Just for me?"

    "Got it in one."

    "How?"

    -o-​

    You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.

    -o-​

    There was going to be another scene after this, but having realised the Inoite issue, I figured it would be best to give you a chance to react to this quickly, so I'm posting it now as is.

    What do you do?

    Voting closes on
     
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    • Velorien said:
    "This isn't just losing Akane," Ino said. "I mean, of course it hurts to lose her—she was my best friend; nobody else compares. But I think what's really hit me, what's made it more than just another loss, was losing a future. I don't know what relationships like the one we had turn into when they grow up. The only model I've got is what happened to the Shikamaru/Kei/Tenten triad, and I don't think there's anything any of us could have done to make our relationship spin that far out of control. But I wanted to find out, and now I won't. I'm very, very glad you're still here, Hazō. Don't get me wrong on that. But I feel like something's gone, some path forward that isn't just Clan Lady Yamanaka Ino having a great boyfriend, and I'll never get it back and I'll never even find out what it was I lost."
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    *stares off at screen in silence for thirty seconds*

    *goes back to reading update*
     
    We dont have to divulge the rest of the specifics, but like, "Hey just so you know I'm about to do an Economics and Asuma is on board FYI and the gem stuff is related to that keep it on the DL" is fine.

    It's a heads up and it's Ino. Not a big problem.
     
    [X] Action Plan: Backtracking
    Word count: <300
    • Ino
      • Don't end the date.
      • Apologize: we're a little scrambled.
      • Yes, we can make gems.
        • Asuma knows: he's helping us sell them.
        • Please keep this under wraps: move investments around, but be subtle about it. No one outside Goketsu knows we can do this.
          • If you take losses, we'll make it up to you.
        • We're meeting with Hinata (Hyuuga luxury goods connections, Shino facilitating) to get her help, build Goketsu-Hyuuga relations.
          • Any advice?
      • Regardless - this mirror won't break.
    • Shino:
      • Make one set of high-quality quartz lenses, another set scaled up ~2x, and several lens blanks.
      • Show him, emphasizing partnership, new possibilities - Goketsu materials, Aburame expertise.
        • Reiterate commitment to destroy them at his request.
        • What could his engineers make? Bigger telescopes? Better portable ones?
      • We're entering the gem market. We'd like to work with Hinata. Can he arrange a meeting?
    • Hinata:
      • Bring sample gems, mission paperwork from Asuma.
        • Don't hide that they're insane stones, but refuse to discuss where we got them.
          • Claim 'Dragon bones'.
          • Obvious lie, clearly not open to discussing their origins.
          • Could Neji get to the Great Seal? It'd be helpful.
      • Goketsu materials, Tower intelligence, Hyuuga connections. Perfect match?
      • Tone/subtext: excited about anticipated profit andprospect of Goketsu-Hyuuga relations.
        • We admire/respect Hinata/the Hyuuga.
        • We're tired of making enemies when we could be making allies.
    • Mari/Kei/Snowflake:
      • High-opsec meeting.
        • Tone: deeply confused. Non-accusatory.
      • Did Shikamaru seriously consider the possibility that Akane's mission was leaked?
      • Seems unlikely she was coincidentally attacked by a well-equipped snatch squad.
      • He responded to the topic strangely severaltimes - didn't immediately search when we reported her missing (Asuma was confused/upset), changed the topic when Hidan was mentioned.
        • Is he okay?
      • What's going on?
    • (Offscreen) Ask Asuma/Harumitsu/other knowledgeable people for Hagoromo who we could talk to.
     
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    If we want to obscure how we made inoite, we could claim that it's a 7P jutsu we got by trade. I don't think we ever succeeded at making a Dog jutsu work, but maybe we pretend it was from Arachnid? Can't say more, Spider clan secret, very hush hush.
     
    FaintlySorcerous said:
    Mari/Kei/Snowflake:
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    Suggestions:
    • Make a call-back to Shikamaru saying that for the Mori/Nara, "preservation of civilization comes first", which hints at him having a motive.
    • Inevitably, a question will be raised regarding how Shikamaru did this, using what deniable assets. In this case, it'd be good if Hazou had a cached thought along the lines of "Thinker clans obviously collaborate with each other", meaning Shikamaru could've alerted the Tama or something. Don't have Hazou proactively mention it, but I suggest putting it in as an "internal thought" that Hazou had, so that he can bring it up if the situation calls for it.
     
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    Noumero said:
    Suggestions:
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    100% of what I want to say here is 'this seems weird, what the heck is happening'. I don't want to accuse him of anything - I want this to start broad and chiefly sanity-check whether the player-base's suspicions are shared by Mari and/or Kei, or if they aren't, whether they find them plausible and worth investigating further.
     
    Have we considered the possibility Shikamaru was compromised without knowingly affecting what happened to Akane? He could've been genjutsu'd/Yamanaka'd/whatever seals the cabal has cooking and so on

    Could explain his uncharacteristic incompetence without it being malicious (he could've just been uncharacteristically incompetent for no reason but idk feels like a lot of convenient things happening at once to me.)
     
    Velorien said:
    "This isn't just losing Akane," Ino said. "I mean, of course it hurts to lose her—she was my best friend; nobody else compares. But I think what's really hit me, what's made it more than just another loss, was losing a future. I don't know what relationships like the one we had turn into when they grow up. The only model I've got is what happened to the Shikamaru/Kei/Tenten triad, and I don't think there's anything any of us could have done to make our relationship spin that far out of control. But I wanted to find out, and now I won't. I'm very, very glad you're still here, Hazō. Don't get me wrong on that. But I feel like something's gone, some path forward that isn't just Clan Lady Yamanaka Ino having a great boyfriend, and I'll never get it back and I'll never even find out what it was I lost."
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    AMI: "Allow me to introduce myself."
    Velorien said:
    "So what's the solution?" Hazō asked. "Even if we weren't at war once, we are now. They've hurt us. We've hurt them. Do we carry on like this forever? I feel like it's natural to hate them, with their bigotry and intolerance and utter refusal to care about people's feelings and even the future of the world over their beloved moth-eaten scrolls of doctrine—but this constant cycle of hatred isn't making anything better. It's not a solution. It's just a regular source of problems, and sometimes I think if Asuma didn't periodically step in to shut down the feedback loop, it would keep going until it destroyed us both."
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    Good job Hazōpilot! Very mature.
    Velorien said:
    He froze as he realized what he'd just said, and what he'd almost said. It was as if a bucket of cold water had been dumped over him.
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    We did it again. Will this ever end?
     
    FaintlySorcerous said:
    100% of what I want to say here is 'this seems weird, what the heck is happening'. I don't want to accuse him of anything - I want this to start broad and chiefly sanity-check whether the player-base's suspicions are shared by Mari and/or Kei, or if they aren't, whether they find them plausible and worth investigating further.
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    Oh, right, was about to mention that too. I think we should directly spell out that Hazou isn't proactively blaming Shikamaru and that he's aware that him even contemplating this is pretty shocking. It's quite clear what we're implying here, and I'm reasonably confident it's going to lead to Kei being aghast and disappointed in Hazou, unless we make our non-commitment to this hypothesis very clear.

    But if we do that, I think we should then go ahead and present the strongest version of the hypothesis and why we think it's plausible; not just vaguely gesture at it.
     
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