- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Me, Ami & Mari: yes being multiple people has made us very mentally stable, thank you very much
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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
Me, Ami & Mari: yes being multiple people has made us very mentally stable, thank you very much
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
I was thinking more of Out-influence than plurality, but that's fair. For most people I've known irl, if they shared their head with others it's because they needed it in the first place so it did help with their stability quite a bit, though I can't say they were necessarily a representative sample.
... How stable do we think Hazō is? Is he some kind of cryptid in the eyes of others by now?
- Location
- Fifth Dimension
I mean...people do.
Because they're fishy as hell and things don't add up. Be good to run it by people so we can make sure we're not seeing something that isn't there.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
As stable as we make him... which is both comforting and horrifying
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Well, we should always be wary. But if they are guilty, there's not much we can do about it. If they aren't, there's no good that can get out of being suspicious. Be good ninja. Ninja like Akane die sometimes, as bad as it is. When we get Akane back, we'll ask her what happened, because we'll want to destroy the chakra coils of the perpetrators or something so they can never be ninja again.
- Location
- Fifth Dimension
Not to them, but it paints a clear picture of how much we should trust them moving forward and if we're actually allies/friends.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Frankly speaking, we should trust and obey Asuma because we have no other choice to survive in Leaf, and also trust Shikamaru because he's our best bet for the world to survive. "Are they trustworthy" is moot imo, because we simply cannot refuse to trust them.
- Location
- Fifth Dimension
That's not how trust works. You can make the argument that we have to obey them, but trusting someone who intrinsically doesn't share your values or viewpoints, and have proven they'll kill you off if you misstep, is foolish.
I don't think "because they have power over us" is a great reason to trust someone.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Epistemologically it isn't. In practice, we can be fairly certain that displaying distrust or adopting a general view of distrust towards Asuma is a bad idea regardless of whether he's trustworthy, as long as he has that power over us. If he's trustworthy, then we don't make a mistake. If he's not, we need to be, and stay, a horse he can bet on.
Surviving is the winning plan, always.
I'm not talking "blind trust because no better deal," I'm talking "keep an eye open but don't stir anything that could look like shit until such a time as any shit stirred can be acted on without too much risk."
We do not have an alternative for the moment if dark!Asuma. So if he has a hand to show, let's not make him show it when we could still win
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
*cough*in God we trust*cough*we the God-fearing ones*cough*
Seems to me the disagreement is a matter of how far "trust" goes and what it means ultimately. I'm not suggesting we assume the best from him or take him at his word on everything forever. I'm suggesting we don't doubt that the military leader who's frankly been helpful to us at least enough times for us to think he's positively-inclined towards us is not going to backstab us if he can help it. Trusting him to not be an enemy and trusting him to be a beacon are different but both covered by the vague concept of "trust," and frankly we have no real recourse if he's an enemy. Let's just not assume the worst for no other reason than we need someone to blame and the Hokage was in the way of our revenge - no matter how justified.
And less charitably, no matter how foolish, that's just how the chain of command works. Our distrust of authority figures lets us see through bullshit but it's been a poor survival plan so far
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- Location
- Fifth Dimension
This is trust though.
We're not assuming the worst though. We're brainstorming and the few strands of evidence we have point towards him being a possibility.
It's probably why we're still alive actually. Trusting authority doesn't really work. Not even the other clans do it, hence clan secrets and just general secrets.
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This just isn't true. Ami literally successfully launched a coup to overthrow a hostile Kage. If we know Asuma is willing to knife us in the back it wouldn't be hard to get her on board. We also have Mari who is just as competent in manipulation as Ami. Add in the fact that thanks to FOOM Mari is or will be soon an essie. She also has a favorable matchup with the one essie Asuma has.
I don't know what parties were involved in Akanae's death. I am genuinely trying to understand what what happened. I would be quite happy to confirm that Leaf factions aren't responsible.
I think there is some evidence of a non-trivial info leak from the tower. that's worth investigating. If Asuma/Shikamaru are on the level, it's something we really need to bring to their attention.
But first, a fair number of things about the situation and Shikamaru's actions seem pretty sus. I want to meet with Mari(and probably Kei), and to point out what we think we've noticed, and ask "hey, this all seems pretty sus, right? what's up with that? and insights?".
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Admitably, I'm also not really sure what to do if it turns out to provably be Shikamaru and he says:
"Fine, you got me. I think having her killed made it 10% more likely for civilization to survive the decade. I didn't consult you because you'd be to emotionally involved to engage constructively. Sorry for your loss but it needed to be done."
That motive seems quite reasonable.
We would't have many actions available that actually make things better.
I see your point about Hazou being furious at Leaf leadership really not helping anything.
I see your point that launching an investigation in a that signals mistrust being unhelpful weather or not Leaf factions are culpable.
That said, I still want to at least share our thoughts with some of our family. If there's insight we're missing, I want to hear it. If I'm jumping a shadows, I want to be told as much. If there are facts we're missing, I want to be told them. If it turns out that Leaf leadership is plausibly responsible for Akanae's death, I want us(including Mari/Kei) to be aware.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
The issue, for me, is that:
If Kei is aware we have suspicions, she may slip that in front of Shikamaru. If Shikamaru is involved, the Tower probably is. So if Shikamaru is involved, and aware we're thinking that, he'll tell the Tower. The worst-case scenario is that it makes us a liability in their view.
Further, if Shikamaru is not involved, there is still a risk that (1) we hurt a friend (2) he tell the Tower and we are seen as a liability.
Kei is fully able to distrust the Hokage on her own, indeed she has us beat in that department. Mari has so much experience fearing and distrusting Kage and being certain one would kill her someday that it became the setting for this entire quest. She's probably got more of a chance than us of hiding it, though.
The pros are null, in my opinion. We're not telling them anything they don't know, but we may alarm them, we may disquiet them, and we may put them in a difficult situation, if we're not putting ourselves in a difficult situation
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Action Plan: Suspicious Minds
Word count: <300
Word count: <300
- Go take the sealing exam.
- Prepare with Kagome.
- Aim to impress.
- Be respectful of the examiner. Offer a post-exam gift as thanks.
- High-security meeting with Kagome, Mari, Kei, Snowflake.
- Tone: we have questions/concerns. We're presenting our perceptions and conclusions, not stating facts. We're looking for input, sanity checks.
- We haven't read Shikamaru's report (can we get a copy?) but we're concerned that the possibility of a planned, targeted assault wasn't given due consideration.
- Team Akane was given a field mission early (~1 month after team formation). Was this actually weird?
- Between the time spent tracking TA (1.5 hours) and their ingress into Fire (4 hours) the attackers were on the move for ~6 hours. You don't enter another nation for fun. Tracking TA implies combat was their objective, otherwise attackers would have evaded.
- Are those timelines compatible with an after-assignment leak? Information travels slowly.
- Question: were the attackers unusually tough?
- Kagome, how hard would it have been to breach Akane's perimeter?
- Akane is a badass and you don't send a team strong enough to beat her for no reason. Weak evidence this was their mission?
- Thoughts? Do we sound completely insane?
- Should we investigate independently? Talk with Asuma? Let this lie?
- Thank and dismiss Kagome: we need to discuss boring politics and economics now.
- Don't directly discuss EM, but allude.
- Shikamaru acted strangely about this twice. First, he didn't dispatch a team immediately. Asuma was surprised/upset. Then he zeroed in on Hidan when we were on the topic. Asuma also found that fine.
- Could he be compromised? Genjutsu? If this was a plot they penetrated the Tower.
- Actual economic/political briefing on Shino, Hinata. Are we going to piss off the Minami? What else are we missing?
- How is the Hagoromo Tower audit going?
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Kagome shouldn't be here if you want EM nuke considerations discussed at all.
It's in my plan!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
and I did vote for it
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Done.
In the original he was dismissed before we discussed anything EM-related but it's more specific now.
Any chance you'd vote for mine?
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
It's one of many possible shapes it can take. Not the one I'm advocating.
"acting sus" and "Akane's mission out was early" is the weakest weak evidence there is. Honestly I'm afraid we're doing Kabuto all over again. Would we be suspecting Asuma any less if not for these two small points? I really think that's motivated thinking.
How is the existence of clan secrets proof that the other clans don't trust authority? They've been a thing forever and they're declared by the clan heads (or clan elders maybe) which is pretty much authority personified.
And I'll note that respecting authority got us killboxed zero times, showing that we wanted independence from authority got us killboxed twice and both times we needed a Mori to get us out with a non-reproducible plan.
Ami isn't us. Ami owned the primary firepower in Mist, and had the people's support, and had everyone of import in Midt in her debt, and Ren had very little support as she was seen as a weak Kage.
I'm really not sure about that. If it protected Kei, sure. If it risked destabilising the world enough for a war, eh.
Not as proficient in politics, which is what we need.
If I recall correctly, Tsunade aura'd Mari to suffocation, and Orochimaru killing intent'd Mari into trauma and crying blood. Which one is a favourable matchup?
- Location
- Fifth Dimension
Yes. Slightly.
Because they're not giving everything they have to the village, it's authority, nor the village's survival?
It got us killswamped. It also arguably got us into this Pangolin situation. And we'd likely be dead/obsolete if we just shared everything with authority figures.