- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @Paperclipped, bumping these questions. I'm optimistic they're straightforward.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- 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
Eisenhelm
gran dutch of douchery
- Location
- Colombia
At the start of each turn's main phase if this card is face up on the field roll a 1d20, if the roll is an odd number this card is executed and placed in the after life, taking 5 points of prestige damage to the user's clan. If the roll is even add one prestige point for every face up "seal", "invention" "summoner contract" and "social-expert" on the field under the user's control and/or influence.
"this isn't what it looks like"
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
These are copies of the reference lenses that the Aburame craftsmen made for you so that you could learn how to copy them effectively. They clearly weren't expecting you to be able to copy them so well so quickly.
Yes.
Yes.
This is what we originally voted in, re diplomacy with the Rats. Seems like a decent starting point for the next conclave plan. Thoughts?
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
This is great and I just want to let you know that Noburi looks like a Korean webtoon historical martial arts protagonist who started from nothing and is going to go to the top of their super op powers
What WDB will do to a mf
Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
What does the work development board has anything to do with this
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Water Dragon Bullet
Xilentxium
Existential Crisis Management
- Location
- Temperate Regions
"Wait…but if he's on this banner, that means…I need to update my lore sheet! This is gonna be such a good speculation video!"
- Location
- a
A good video?
No this is definitely worth a three-video essay atleast.
First we will delve into the full lore meticulously collected from every references in the game, continuing with a speculation drawn from every dev update from every patch and finally with a mega-theory combining multiple characters, complete with characters that haven't been announced yet
- Location
- a
I think this is pretty solid. Although I do wonder how the rats see us now. I do think it's positive considering we technically set free to a condor who just tried to kill us.
I also worry about pangolin reprisals now from pantsa, especially affecting Kei primarily here.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Yeah, it's like NFTs, except you're not paying for a PNG, you're paying for a chance to get the PNG.
Can Noumero escape the thread before a maybe-nonexistent mass of gacha sympathizers gets him? He is acting from ambush, so let's say it's a flat TN of 40*0.6 = 24 (chance that an ideologue will refresh the thread at that exact moment, down-weighted by the nonexistence hypothesis).
He has three tabs open, and he has to close them all before anyone can respond. He's not particularly willing to spend FP on this.
Worst of three vs. TN 24 (draws in favour of the combat initiator):
Noumero, Fine Motor Control (close all SV tabs really fast): 30 + 9 = 39
Noumero, Fine Motor Control (close all SV tabs really fast): 30 + 3 = 33
Noumero, Fine Motor Control (close all SV tabs really fast): 30 - 6 = 24
Phew. That last one was close.
He has three tabs open, and he has to close them all before anyone can respond. He's not particularly willing to spend FP on this.
Worst of three vs. TN 24 (draws in favour of the combat initiator):
Noumero, Fine Motor Control (close all SV tabs really fast): 30 + 9 = 39
Noumero, Fine Motor Control (close all SV tabs really fast): 30 + 3 = 33
Noumero, Fine Motor Control (close all SV tabs really fast): 30 - 6 = 24
Phew. That last one was close.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think that's necessarily accurate. For example, I play Arknights. It is a gacha, with all the fundamental properties of the format. However, it is also a tower defence game, and I am paying (or would be if I wasn't mostly F2P) for things that will have a practical impact on my ability to complete levels, progress in the storyline, etc. in specific ways depending on what I get.
Chapter 598: 37.5 Hours to Live
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hazō, Mari, Kei, and Snowflake reclined in luxurious padded armchairs, sipping lightly-spiced hot chocolate beneath the chandelier-light of the palatial Cleaning Supplies Overflow closet. In the middle, a carved oak table grand enough to serve an entire Gōketsu Clan war council held Hazō's secret weapon: a meticulously-assembled timetable, in other words a specialised kind of list. No naysayer would be capable of stopping him in his tracks with this devastating implement of organisation at his disposal.
"So," Mari began, "what is this highly-sensitive business that takes priority over my urgent need to cure a certain Merchant Council gentleman of his unexpected pangs of conscience?"
Hazō decided he didn't want to know.
"I believe," he raised his voice dramatically, "there may be a conspiracy afoot!"
He did not expect the response he got.
"Which one?" Mari asked. "I can think of maybe three that should be due to kick off right about now."
"I myself hold a leading role in several, between the Nara, the KEI, and certain other endeavours," Kei added, "as well as providing logistical support and ad hoc supervision for others orchestrated by Ami and Shikamaru."
"I am completely ignorant of same," Snowflake said, "and you should all feel comfortable discussing your suspicions and counter-plotting with me."
Hazō was silent for about five seconds.
"You know what," he said, "for the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear anything and move on to the main topic. I think there's something not right with the series of events surrounding Akane's disappearance."
Mari put down her mug of hot chocolate. "Hazō, I may be the last person to give advice on healthy coping strategies, but if this is about finding someone new to blame for Akane's death, please… let it go. The whole thing's been thoroughly investigated, we already have all the culprits we're getting until the tracking teams bring us back some heads, and all you can do now is end up whipping yourself into a paranoid frenzy and wasting your time–or your credibility–on futile accusations when you should be healing. Don't do this to yourself."
This time, though, Hazō was ahead of the conversation.
"I've run the numbers," he said.
"You've run the numbers?" Mari repeated sceptically as Kei and Snowflake simultaneously said, "Proceed."
"Let's look at the timeline," Hazō said gratefully (and, secretly, with a little smugness) as he pointed to the timetable. "Team Akane's mission was assigned on January 5th. That's our first data point, and it already stands out. The team was formed only a month earlier–what were they doing already on a mission in the wilderness of Fire? A month in, Team Mako was stress-testing training dummies and delivering packages for the Quartermaster's Office. Once, we got to stand guard outside a military warehouse overnight and we were so excited about getting to act like real ninja."
"That's ignoring context," Mari said. "The strange thing about Team Akane was it being formed after graduation, instead of being decided in the final year and confirmed based on exam performance. The team itself, the three genin, had already been around for months by the time they got her. You might say it was unusual for them to only get a month of relearning their teamwork with her at the centre before heading into combat, but in the end, it's the squad leader's call whether the team is ready."
"Akane being Akane," Kei said, "I cannot in all confidence state that she would have rejected a direct order for the sake of additional training time, even if the specifics of her situation permitted her to."
"Fine," Hazō said. He didn't want to think about Akane's critical willingness to take orders, the willingness that had her burn down an entire town and plunge into a darkness Hazō never found a way to rescue her from.
"Let's summarise the timeline," he said. "Akane gets assigned her mission around noon on January 5th. The next day, the 6th, her team sets out for the Wakare Woods, and that's when the attackers enter and follow their trail. It takes four hours to get from the nearest border to the trail, then maybe an hour and a half to follow it and reach the campsite.
"That's a lot of time spent in enemy territory, among enemy patrols, following a fixed route. It wasn't a team of missing-nin just passing through, or weirdos like Grandmaster F out on a stroll through the countryside. This was a premeditated mission, to kill or to capture. In the best-case scenario, they were just here to grab the first Leaf team they found, but honestly, I'm in no mood to be that optimistic."
"I cannot rationalise such a use of resources," Kei agreed. "We live in the age of AMITY, and the villages wait with bated breath for the first offender, that they may witness what kind of example will be made of them, and adjust their own foreign policy based on whether the organisation displays bite to match its bark. A randomly-chosen Leaf team would not be a reward commensurate to the risk."
"Right," Hazō agreed. "The fact of the attack proves that somebody wanted specifically Team Akane captured or dead.
"But let's follow the list in order."
Three people rolled their eyes. Hazō ignored the heretics mocking powers they refused to comprehend.
"Night of the 6th," he said. "After Team Akane made camp, the enemy attacked them. Most likely, it was an ambush. There weren't enough traces of combat, and none of the genin had a chance to run or send signals for help."
"While it would be bizarre to attack an unsuspecting camp at night and not attempt an ambush," Snowflake said, "it is not as if it would be difficult for a prepared assassination or capture team to incapacitate a handful of fresh genin, considering near-parity of numbers and availability of area-of-effect attacks. Likewise, a taijutsu specialist like Akane would not typically leave much destruction in her wake, and we know that the attackers were patient enough to bury evidence."
"Snowflake," Kei said, "you are being highly pedantic."
"What of it?"
"I merely wished to express my gratitude," Kei said. "Your commentary is timely and well-reasoned, and I appreciate you shouldering some of the burden of pedantry that is typically mine alone."
"Oh," Snowflake said, looking down sheepishly at her mug of hot chocolate. Hazō gave Mari a puzzled look, but she just shrugged at him.
"As I was saying," Hazō went on patiently, "it was probably an ambush, and considering Akane's trap-making talents and the fact that she got the same Kagome-sensei training as the rest of us, I'm pretty sure the attackers would be dust if they so much as put a toe wrong. Which means they must have bypassed the array altogether."
"They had skywalkers," Mari pointed out. "I've never had the heart to point out to Kagome that your invention makes his second greatest obsession obsolete against anyone with access to a decent sealmaster. Besides, Akane's array would've been set up against chakra beasts."
Hazō nodded, ignoring the first half of that response as firmly as he'd ever ignored anything in his entire life.
"That's also what Kagome-sensei said when I asked him how hard it would be to bypass." It went without saying that arrays against ninja were completely different from arrays against chakra beasts. The former emphasised stealth, because an exposed array could be navigated, disarmed, or even turned against its owners by a tactically-brilliant opponent, whereas even a single missed trap might be enough to cripple the human who triggered it. The latter emphasised overwhelming force, since chakra beasts with trap-detecting senses were much less common than swarms that could overrun an array with sheer numbers or behemoths that could power through and still be in fighting shape after a dozen explosions to the snout.
"Additionally," Kei said, "the buried items at the site imply access to earth manipulation ninjutsu, in which case we cannot exclude the possibility that they simply tunnelled under the array. In my time with the Nara, I have come to appreciate that blindness to the various weaknesses of the standard trap array as a concept is a key weakness of the Kagome school, much like its excessive focus on explosives."
"Kei!" Hazō exclaimed. "I love you as a sister, but I will not hear those words spoken within my house."
"I know you mean well," Mari added, "but that kind of language is uncalled for."
"Please do not be too harsh on her," Snowflake said. "None of us are above careless words in times of stress."
"...I sincerely apologise," Kei said to the room at large after a few seconds. "As I feared, my lack of opportunities to spend time with my family, even now that my bond with Mari is firmer than ever, is causing me to drift away from my roots. As I have in any case set this afternoon aside for Gōketsu matters, when we are finished here, I will seek out Kagome and request a remedial rant."
Mari looked Kei in the eye with a gentle smile. "I think that would be best, Kei. What's family for if not to catch you when you start to fall?"
Hazō smiled as well. "Looks like I've got another reason to be quick about explaining my theory. Kagome-sensei's going to be over the moon about you coming to him of your own accord. Start too late, and he could be going until the early hours of the morning."
"...Is it too late to reconsider?"
It was. "At some point on the 7th," Hazō said, "the attackers exfiltrate. We estimate that it took them seven hours to reach the border. No signs of serious injury after fighting a de facto special jōnin, no signs of major chakra expenditure."
"What is your evidence for this claim?" Snowflake interrupted.
"Travel speed," Hazō said. "I don't think they could have covered the distance without chakra boost, or while injured."
"You have concluded that it was a seven-hour journey," Snowflake objected, "not that they made it in seven hours. Even Canvass cannot track a week-old trail to the hour. It is also possible that they took injuries that did not impede their escape, such as to the arms, or ones that could be suppressed with anaesthesia or medical ninjutsu. Furthermore, lack of chakra expenditure is not indicative, insofar as"–she gave Kei a meaningful look–"a simple explosive tag would be sufficient to severely injure or kill even a special jōnin who was unaware of the incoming attack and thus failed to dive for cover."
"I already apologised," Kei muttered.
"All right," Hazō said. "It's circumstantial evidence, not proof. I don't think that changes the fact that they'd have needed to be a strong team–maybe jōnin, at least multiple chuunin. Not the kind of resources you deploy lightly."
"In the first place," Mari said, "it's not like anyone's going to send a three-man genin team on a combat mission in enemy territory. Of course they were chuunin or higher. Sorry to ruin your deduction, Hazō."
"So here's the thing," Hazō said, finally reaching his conclusion, which no pedantry could ruin. "You don't pull off an ambush like this by getting lucky. Assuming we rule out the possibility that they were after targets of opportunity"–Kei and Snowflake nodded–"this needed solid intel. They'd likely need her route."
"Or simply her destination and the ability to draw a straight line on a map," Kei noted.
"Minus one pedantry point, Kei," Snowflake said. "Those two possibilities are functionally identical."
Kei glared at the betrayer.
"Think about it," Hazō said. "A spy would need to get hold of that information as soon as it was available, then immediately run right for the border, at ninja speed, to deliver it on time. That's very unlikely. Highly-skilled ninja infiltrators willing to blow their cover at the Tower just to get at Akane and her genin don't grow on trees. The more I think about it, the more plausible it looks that the information was leaked in advance."
Kei and Snowflake looked at each other. Kei waved a hand in an ominous "go ahead" gesture.
"Why?" Snowflake asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Why would the spy need to run immediately? According to your most pleasingly-formatted timetable"--she pointed to the first few lines on her copy–"the mission was assigned at noon on the 5th. The assassination attempt occurred at night of the 6th, at some point before Team Akane broke camp. Assuming they would do so at sunrise, which would have been 7 a.m., and subtracting the attackers' travel time to reach the site, that allows a maximum of 37.5 hours between mission assignment and the attackers' departure from a hypothetical camp on the border.
"A cornucopia of options presents itself within those 37.5 hours. A shinobi infiltrator has time to find a convenient excuse to leave the village. A well-funded civilian spy, to purchase or borrow a steed suited for rapid woodland travel. Perhaps foreign shinobi can be found at the gates after an escort mission, or visiting under some other pretext, for AMITY offers new excuses for international travel for the creative, and are prepared to carry a coded message–either for payment or because they are allies of the traitor. Perhaps civilian waypoints exist amenable to a rapid message relay. Such systems might have been prepared years ago, equivalents of Jiraiya's civilian spy network, and 37.5 hours could well be enough to activate them. Mari, with her superlative infiltration experience, can surely add a dozen more options, but I trust the point is made."
Mari nodded, not without sympathy.
Hazō stared helplessly at his timetable. His conspiracy theory required an event that was nigh-impossible without a conspiracy. He didn't actually think that the attackers had departed at 1:30 a.m. on the 7th and attacked shortly before sunrise, or that Fire held an enemy spy network just waiting to carry an urgent message to an enemy team who just happened to be waiting for it on the border. But that didn't matter. The only standard of plausibility an explanation needed to meet was that it be more plausible than the idea that somebody with access to Akane's mission details set her up. How would Hazō's sanity-check team weigh Snowflake's observations, implicitly supported by Mari and Kei, against the accusation, no, even the speculation, that someone with the potent motivation of keeping Elemental Mastery secret–which was to say Asuma, Shikamaru, or one of the people in this room–had had Akane murdered in cold blood?
Should he even be trying to persuade them? Or should he accept that there was no internal enemy to be found? Maybe Mari was right, and he was just looking for someone to blame because he couldn't accept the fact that he was powerless to lay a finger on the ninja who'd killed her, stuck sitting at home waiting for news while their fate was being determined by strangers who'd barely known Akane.
"Did you have anything else, Hazō?" Mari asked, with no real curiosity, for completeness' sake.
Thinking about it again, Hazō could only make one reply…
You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.
What do you do? You may vote in a plan for the conversation to continue. Otherwise, it will be assumed that Hazō backed off and nothing further came of it (except for poor Kei).
Voting ends on
"So," Mari began, "what is this highly-sensitive business that takes priority over my urgent need to cure a certain Merchant Council gentleman of his unexpected pangs of conscience?"
Hazō decided he didn't want to know.
"I believe," he raised his voice dramatically, "there may be a conspiracy afoot!"
He did not expect the response he got.
"Which one?" Mari asked. "I can think of maybe three that should be due to kick off right about now."
"I myself hold a leading role in several, between the Nara, the KEI, and certain other endeavours," Kei added, "as well as providing logistical support and ad hoc supervision for others orchestrated by Ami and Shikamaru."
"I am completely ignorant of same," Snowflake said, "and you should all feel comfortable discussing your suspicions and counter-plotting with me."
Hazō was silent for about five seconds.
"You know what," he said, "for the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear anything and move on to the main topic. I think there's something not right with the series of events surrounding Akane's disappearance."
Mari put down her mug of hot chocolate. "Hazō, I may be the last person to give advice on healthy coping strategies, but if this is about finding someone new to blame for Akane's death, please… let it go. The whole thing's been thoroughly investigated, we already have all the culprits we're getting until the tracking teams bring us back some heads, and all you can do now is end up whipping yourself into a paranoid frenzy and wasting your time–or your credibility–on futile accusations when you should be healing. Don't do this to yourself."
This time, though, Hazō was ahead of the conversation.
"I've run the numbers," he said.
"You've run the numbers?" Mari repeated sceptically as Kei and Snowflake simultaneously said, "Proceed."
"Let's look at the timeline," Hazō said gratefully (and, secretly, with a little smugness) as he pointed to the timetable. "Team Akane's mission was assigned on January 5th. That's our first data point, and it already stands out. The team was formed only a month earlier–what were they doing already on a mission in the wilderness of Fire? A month in, Team Mako was stress-testing training dummies and delivering packages for the Quartermaster's Office. Once, we got to stand guard outside a military warehouse overnight and we were so excited about getting to act like real ninja."
"That's ignoring context," Mari said. "The strange thing about Team Akane was it being formed after graduation, instead of being decided in the final year and confirmed based on exam performance. The team itself, the three genin, had already been around for months by the time they got her. You might say it was unusual for them to only get a month of relearning their teamwork with her at the centre before heading into combat, but in the end, it's the squad leader's call whether the team is ready."
"Akane being Akane," Kei said, "I cannot in all confidence state that she would have rejected a direct order for the sake of additional training time, even if the specifics of her situation permitted her to."
"Fine," Hazō said. He didn't want to think about Akane's critical willingness to take orders, the willingness that had her burn down an entire town and plunge into a darkness Hazō never found a way to rescue her from.
"Let's summarise the timeline," he said. "Akane gets assigned her mission around noon on January 5th. The next day, the 6th, her team sets out for the Wakare Woods, and that's when the attackers enter and follow their trail. It takes four hours to get from the nearest border to the trail, then maybe an hour and a half to follow it and reach the campsite.
"That's a lot of time spent in enemy territory, among enemy patrols, following a fixed route. It wasn't a team of missing-nin just passing through, or weirdos like Grandmaster F out on a stroll through the countryside. This was a premeditated mission, to kill or to capture. In the best-case scenario, they were just here to grab the first Leaf team they found, but honestly, I'm in no mood to be that optimistic."
"I cannot rationalise such a use of resources," Kei agreed. "We live in the age of AMITY, and the villages wait with bated breath for the first offender, that they may witness what kind of example will be made of them, and adjust their own foreign policy based on whether the organisation displays bite to match its bark. A randomly-chosen Leaf team would not be a reward commensurate to the risk."
"Right," Hazō agreed. "The fact of the attack proves that somebody wanted specifically Team Akane captured or dead.
"But let's follow the list in order."
Three people rolled their eyes. Hazō ignored the heretics mocking powers they refused to comprehend.
"Night of the 6th," he said. "After Team Akane made camp, the enemy attacked them. Most likely, it was an ambush. There weren't enough traces of combat, and none of the genin had a chance to run or send signals for help."
"While it would be bizarre to attack an unsuspecting camp at night and not attempt an ambush," Snowflake said, "it is not as if it would be difficult for a prepared assassination or capture team to incapacitate a handful of fresh genin, considering near-parity of numbers and availability of area-of-effect attacks. Likewise, a taijutsu specialist like Akane would not typically leave much destruction in her wake, and we know that the attackers were patient enough to bury evidence."
"Snowflake," Kei said, "you are being highly pedantic."
"What of it?"
"I merely wished to express my gratitude," Kei said. "Your commentary is timely and well-reasoned, and I appreciate you shouldering some of the burden of pedantry that is typically mine alone."
"Oh," Snowflake said, looking down sheepishly at her mug of hot chocolate. Hazō gave Mari a puzzled look, but she just shrugged at him.
"As I was saying," Hazō went on patiently, "it was probably an ambush, and considering Akane's trap-making talents and the fact that she got the same Kagome-sensei training as the rest of us, I'm pretty sure the attackers would be dust if they so much as put a toe wrong. Which means they must have bypassed the array altogether."
"They had skywalkers," Mari pointed out. "I've never had the heart to point out to Kagome that your invention makes his second greatest obsession obsolete against anyone with access to a decent sealmaster. Besides, Akane's array would've been set up against chakra beasts."
Hazō nodded, ignoring the first half of that response as firmly as he'd ever ignored anything in his entire life.
"That's also what Kagome-sensei said when I asked him how hard it would be to bypass." It went without saying that arrays against ninja were completely different from arrays against chakra beasts. The former emphasised stealth, because an exposed array could be navigated, disarmed, or even turned against its owners by a tactically-brilliant opponent, whereas even a single missed trap might be enough to cripple the human who triggered it. The latter emphasised overwhelming force, since chakra beasts with trap-detecting senses were much less common than swarms that could overrun an array with sheer numbers or behemoths that could power through and still be in fighting shape after a dozen explosions to the snout.
"Additionally," Kei said, "the buried items at the site imply access to earth manipulation ninjutsu, in which case we cannot exclude the possibility that they simply tunnelled under the array. In my time with the Nara, I have come to appreciate that blindness to the various weaknesses of the standard trap array as a concept is a key weakness of the Kagome school, much like its excessive focus on explosives."
"Kei!" Hazō exclaimed. "I love you as a sister, but I will not hear those words spoken within my house."
"I know you mean well," Mari added, "but that kind of language is uncalled for."
"Please do not be too harsh on her," Snowflake said. "None of us are above careless words in times of stress."
"...I sincerely apologise," Kei said to the room at large after a few seconds. "As I feared, my lack of opportunities to spend time with my family, even now that my bond with Mari is firmer than ever, is causing me to drift away from my roots. As I have in any case set this afternoon aside for Gōketsu matters, when we are finished here, I will seek out Kagome and request a remedial rant."
Mari looked Kei in the eye with a gentle smile. "I think that would be best, Kei. What's family for if not to catch you when you start to fall?"
Hazō smiled as well. "Looks like I've got another reason to be quick about explaining my theory. Kagome-sensei's going to be over the moon about you coming to him of your own accord. Start too late, and he could be going until the early hours of the morning."
"...Is it too late to reconsider?"
It was. "At some point on the 7th," Hazō said, "the attackers exfiltrate. We estimate that it took them seven hours to reach the border. No signs of serious injury after fighting a de facto special jōnin, no signs of major chakra expenditure."
"What is your evidence for this claim?" Snowflake interrupted.
"Travel speed," Hazō said. "I don't think they could have covered the distance without chakra boost, or while injured."
"You have concluded that it was a seven-hour journey," Snowflake objected, "not that they made it in seven hours. Even Canvass cannot track a week-old trail to the hour. It is also possible that they took injuries that did not impede their escape, such as to the arms, or ones that could be suppressed with anaesthesia or medical ninjutsu. Furthermore, lack of chakra expenditure is not indicative, insofar as"–she gave Kei a meaningful look–"a simple explosive tag would be sufficient to severely injure or kill even a special jōnin who was unaware of the incoming attack and thus failed to dive for cover."
"I already apologised," Kei muttered.
"All right," Hazō said. "It's circumstantial evidence, not proof. I don't think that changes the fact that they'd have needed to be a strong team–maybe jōnin, at least multiple chuunin. Not the kind of resources you deploy lightly."
"In the first place," Mari said, "it's not like anyone's going to send a three-man genin team on a combat mission in enemy territory. Of course they were chuunin or higher. Sorry to ruin your deduction, Hazō."
"So here's the thing," Hazō said, finally reaching his conclusion, which no pedantry could ruin. "You don't pull off an ambush like this by getting lucky. Assuming we rule out the possibility that they were after targets of opportunity"–Kei and Snowflake nodded–"this needed solid intel. They'd likely need her route."
"Or simply her destination and the ability to draw a straight line on a map," Kei noted.
"Minus one pedantry point, Kei," Snowflake said. "Those two possibilities are functionally identical."
Kei glared at the betrayer.
"Think about it," Hazō said. "A spy would need to get hold of that information as soon as it was available, then immediately run right for the border, at ninja speed, to deliver it on time. That's very unlikely. Highly-skilled ninja infiltrators willing to blow their cover at the Tower just to get at Akane and her genin don't grow on trees. The more I think about it, the more plausible it looks that the information was leaked in advance."
Kei and Snowflake looked at each other. Kei waved a hand in an ominous "go ahead" gesture.
"Why?" Snowflake asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Why would the spy need to run immediately? According to your most pleasingly-formatted timetable"--she pointed to the first few lines on her copy–"the mission was assigned at noon on the 5th. The assassination attempt occurred at night of the 6th, at some point before Team Akane broke camp. Assuming they would do so at sunrise, which would have been 7 a.m., and subtracting the attackers' travel time to reach the site, that allows a maximum of 37.5 hours between mission assignment and the attackers' departure from a hypothetical camp on the border.
"A cornucopia of options presents itself within those 37.5 hours. A shinobi infiltrator has time to find a convenient excuse to leave the village. A well-funded civilian spy, to purchase or borrow a steed suited for rapid woodland travel. Perhaps foreign shinobi can be found at the gates after an escort mission, or visiting under some other pretext, for AMITY offers new excuses for international travel for the creative, and are prepared to carry a coded message–either for payment or because they are allies of the traitor. Perhaps civilian waypoints exist amenable to a rapid message relay. Such systems might have been prepared years ago, equivalents of Jiraiya's civilian spy network, and 37.5 hours could well be enough to activate them. Mari, with her superlative infiltration experience, can surely add a dozen more options, but I trust the point is made."
Mari nodded, not without sympathy.
Hazō stared helplessly at his timetable. His conspiracy theory required an event that was nigh-impossible without a conspiracy. He didn't actually think that the attackers had departed at 1:30 a.m. on the 7th and attacked shortly before sunrise, or that Fire held an enemy spy network just waiting to carry an urgent message to an enemy team who just happened to be waiting for it on the border. But that didn't matter. The only standard of plausibility an explanation needed to meet was that it be more plausible than the idea that somebody with access to Akane's mission details set her up. How would Hazō's sanity-check team weigh Snowflake's observations, implicitly supported by Mari and Kei, against the accusation, no, even the speculation, that someone with the potent motivation of keeping Elemental Mastery secret–which was to say Asuma, Shikamaru, or one of the people in this room–had had Akane murdered in cold blood?
Should he even be trying to persuade them? Or should he accept that there was no internal enemy to be found? Maybe Mari was right, and he was just looking for someone to blame because he couldn't accept the fact that he was powerless to lay a finger on the ninja who'd killed her, stuck sitting at home waiting for news while their fate was being determined by strangers who'd barely known Akane.
"Did you have anything else, Hazō?" Mari asked, with no real curiosity, for completeness' sake.
Thinking about it again, Hazō could only make one reply…
-o-
You have received 3 + 1 = 4 XP.
-o-
What do you do? You may vote in a plan for the conversation to continue. Otherwise, it will be assumed that Hazō backed off and nothing further came of it (except for poor Kei).
Voting ends on
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- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
If we want to get technical, you're not paying for a PNG either if you buy an NFT, you're paying for a website to acknowledge your ownership of an internal link on that website to a PNG (or to whatever, really).
It's like going to a museum and buying a receipt for a painting, and you have no rights over the painting because what you bought was a receipt, and also the receipt just says what painting it's referring, but it is not even affiliated with the museum, and also you can't take it out of the room you bought it in. You can go to the museum and look at your receipt stapled to the inside door of a cleaning supplies cabinet whenever you like, though.
WHICH GIVES ME AN IDEA ABOUT ADOPTION TICKETS. Let's do Ninja Formation Tickets, which lets people "buy" and "trade" receipts about ninja teams, and th- no? ok
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
There's a stunt you can buy for this if you researched reactive explosives and are willing to tank some stress.
(Yes, I too have 1000 tabs open at all times, threadgoers).
- Location
- United States
@Paperclipped @eaglejarl @Velorien
Is this rule outdated? I interpreted it to mean that the enemy team running 140 miles through Leaf in less than a day would be on the very edge of their limits, meaning that they were camped very close to the border before their entry.
In other words, they were already prepared for the operation and deployed to the border by the night of January 5th.
Is this rule outdated? I interpreted it to mean that the enemy team running 140 miles through Leaf in less than a day would be on the very edge of their limits, meaning that they were camped very close to the border before their entry.
In other words, they were already prepared for the operation and deployed to the border by the night of January 5th.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The rule is in date. HDK when the enemy team set out, when they arrived, and how much of that time they spent going at top speed.@Paperclipped @eaglejarl @Velorien
Is this rule outdated? I interpreted it to mean that the enemy team running 140 miles through Leaf in less than a day would be on the very edge of their limits, meaning that they were camped very close to the border before their entry.
In other words, they were already prepared for the operation and deployed to the border by the night of January 5th.
Also, please remember that posting questions as images means we can't copy-paste them into the QM chat for easy discussion.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
Can't argue with anything that precise. Let's hope there are a few hours more though. Unless it's 37.5 hours to live for someone we don't like. Oooh, the Dragons.
Classy. Keep it up guys, that's really cool.
<irony>I had high hopes for you, Gōketsu designers, but you couldn't even source a kaya table?</irony>
Plans within plans, they'll never see it coming. Rightful Data Punching style!
If you can decide you don't want to know, you know enough that you should know, and your mind can make up worse things anyway. Still, "don't get derailed" is the winning plan. Not to conflate with the winning project, which is Project: Omnicule.
Hehehe. Smooth as always.
YES THANK YOU. Not that he can't be right, but this is not the time.
What was the phrase? They are Mori, and they know the numbers. Those who do not have no right to speak?
I do hope when we get her back we don't get her in her hospital-depressed form, blaming herself for dying and falling prey to a trap or something. Akane falling, chakra-exhausted, while fleeing from Hot Springs comes to mind - she puts the good of her team, or of Leaf, before hers, always, and if anything is wrong with her team, with Leaf, or with how it goes, she makes it her problem in the worst way possible. She needs her light to shine inwards!
Let's hope Jashin is not the god of lists. Just in case.
Autistic flirting 💜 (in all seriousness I've seen it look like that irl and it's so cute) doubly wonderful seeing how Snowflake started, indeed.
That awkward moment when for the... third? time, the opinion that "explosions as the right tool for every job as opposed to any job is the sign of a tactically-crippled mind" is firmly stamped out. Explosives solve everything. Let's make that Onion Drive some day, too.
Sage damn it, now I'm getting convinced more and more that there is one. Because if I were you, I wouldn't make something bad happen and then gloat about it, I'd make Hazō doubt himself and feel bad about suspecting allies before being proven to have been right about the traitors all along. That is, assuming you're evil.
But does anyone turn to art - and writing specifically amongst the arts - without a propensity for evil? I doubt it
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This smells odd to me. I cant quite pinpoint why, besides a minor bit of suspicion coming from how reluctant Kei is to even consider this, when she was the head of the 'Asuma is going to have Akane killed' committee. It is not at all out of character for Kei to put aside her own beliefs in this sort of situation, but another possible explanation is that this group is trying to put Hazou off the trail.
I think there are good reasons they could be doing this, not the least of which is that Hazou has shown that he is not great at keeping Opsec recently, having nearly leaked clan secrets to Shikamaru in his grief and not keeping the gem stuff particularly secret either. If what happened to Akane needs to be kept secret, Hazou is not a good person to know right now. This may be a decent reason to drop it.
Also, it should be noted there are a few reasons that come to mind why what happened to Akane would need to be kept secret. It could be that Asuma or Shika were maliciously involved, but it could also be that Akane went into hiding. It could even have been something that Akane herself requested. I dont know that any of these are more likely than the others, but just noting that there are reasons why our sanity panel would be misleading us for our own good, not simply out of malice.
I think there are good reasons they could be doing this, not the least of which is that Hazou has shown that he is not great at keeping Opsec recently, having nearly leaked clan secrets to Shikamaru in his grief and not keeping the gem stuff particularly secret either. If what happened to Akane needs to be kept secret, Hazou is not a good person to know right now. This may be a decent reason to drop it.
Also, it should be noted there are a few reasons that come to mind why what happened to Akane would need to be kept secret. It could be that Asuma or Shika were maliciously involved, but it could also be that Akane went into hiding. It could even have been something that Akane herself requested. I dont know that any of these are more likely than the others, but just noting that there are reasons why our sanity panel would be misleading us for our own good, not simply out of malice.
Assuming nobody comes up with a reasonable response,
[x] Action Plan: Exam Day
[x] Action Plan: Exam Day
- Take the Sealing exam.
Does Mari know more about the investigation than we do? Because AFAICT we just have to trust that Asuma and the tower did a thorough investigation, we don't actually know what they investigated.
It made me surprisingly happy to read Hazō say this.
This, uh, seems bad.
Okay, so the answer is that getting information out of Leaf is plausible and in the threat model. Makes sense. I still have some confusions/suspicions, going to do a longer post about that in a bit.
Kei and Mari agree that this isn't strong evidence that an internal party is responsible, and propose methods the leak could have gotten out that fast.
I haven't looked to closely yet, but find the mechanisms proposed to be potentially possible, but I don't have the world-knowledge to say how plausible they are. Mari and Kei say they are plausible.
Either:
A) Our sanity/analysis council is gaslighting us for unclear reasons.
B) There isn't strong evidence that an internal party is responsible.
Either way, it's probably time for Hazou to drop this.
I haven't looked to closely yet, but find the mechanisms proposed to be potentially possible, but I don't have the world-knowledge to say how plausible they are. Mari and Kei say they are plausible.
Either:
A) Our sanity/analysis council is gaslighting us for unclear reasons.
B) There isn't strong evidence that an internal party is responsible.
Either way, it's probably time for Hazou to drop this.
@Velorien @Paperclipped @eaglejarl
There's been some discussion in Discord about travel times. Based on Tokushima time we have sunrise and sunset times of approx 7am and 5pm in early January.
TA is assigned their mission at 12PM on Jan 5. That means any spy that hears the leak has 5hrs of daylight to get to the border. The border is approx 150 miles away from Leaf. That means at full ninja speed they'd still need to travel 50+ miles in the dark.
Now realistically, it probably takes them at least an hour to hear the leak and get outside of Leaf. So we're looking at 70 miles in the dark.
Hazou knows that ninja can sustain travel for 8 hours at 20 mph. And Vel said that he thinks they can go 5-10 mph in rough country in the dark depending on lighting levels.
Does Hazou know how bright the moon was that night? On 5 Jan 2023 it was almost a full moon in Tokushima
Does Hazou know if there are any major roads out from Leaf in that direction? There are no cities that way. So no need for major roads IMO
Does Hazou think it possible to push harder than 20 mph for 8 hours?
Say the possible spy ran 4 hours at 20 mph during the day and 14 hrs traveling at 5mph that night to make it to the border by 7am Jan 6. Is that something a ninja could do? Or is it impossible to push for that kind of speed at the expense of being useless for a few days.
There's been some discussion in Discord about travel times. Based on Tokushima time we have sunrise and sunset times of approx 7am and 5pm in early January.
TA is assigned their mission at 12PM on Jan 5. That means any spy that hears the leak has 5hrs of daylight to get to the border. The border is approx 150 miles away from Leaf. That means at full ninja speed they'd still need to travel 50+ miles in the dark.
Now realistically, it probably takes them at least an hour to hear the leak and get outside of Leaf. So we're looking at 70 miles in the dark.
Hazou knows that ninja can sustain travel for 8 hours at 20 mph. And Vel said that he thinks they can go 5-10 mph in rough country in the dark depending on lighting levels.
Does Hazou know how bright the moon was that night? On 5 Jan 2023 it was almost a full moon in Tokushima
Does Hazou know if there are any major roads out from Leaf in that direction? There are no cities that way. So no need for major roads IMO
Does Hazou think it possible to push harder than 20 mph for 8 hours?
Say the possible spy ran 4 hours at 20 mph during the day and 14 hrs traveling at 5mph that night to make it to the border by 7am Jan 6. Is that something a ninja could do? Or is it impossible to push for that kind of speed at the expense of being useless for a few days.
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