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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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I know this won't change a thing, but I want to show support for the plans I deem the safest. Precommitting is the winning plan, except when we die. Which we might. At least we'll see Akane and Jiraiya again.
[x] Action Plan: Jashin Take the Wheel
[x] Action Plan: Oh Boy, Here I Go Killing Again
Edit: Actually fuck it, we ball
[X] Religion Plan: Convert Hidan And Ourself To Jashinism Two, Which Is Twice As Good
 
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Adhoc vote count started by eaglejarl on Jun 25, 2023 at 1:00 PM, finished with 189 posts and 32 votes.
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Voting is closed.
 
MadScientist said:
So what're we doing when Hidan takes one sip of Akane Blood, says "brb", and returns twenty seconds later with Shikamaru's severed head (with half a spinal cord dangling underneath it)?
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Ten minutes later:

ASUMA: Hazō, have you seen Shikamaru? He was just out getting a blood donation from Akane's parents in case what you had wasn't enough. I hope he didn't spill any on himself; that's said to bring terrible luck.
 
Velorien said:
Ten minutes later:

ASUMA: Hazō, have you seen Shikamaru? He was just out getting a blood donation from Akane's parents in case what you had wasn't enough. I hope he didn't spill any on himself; that's said to bring terrible luck.
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Minutes before:
Asuma: "Shikamaru, Akatsuki have been detected inside Konoha"
Shikamaru: "I shall acquire fresh Akane's relative's blood posthaste to have deniability, I mean, help the search"

Alt:
Asuma:"oh no I'm so sorry I destroyed your clothes completely accidentally, here change into these"
Shikamaru: "these are bloodstained"
Asuma: "needs must, now go fetch me the items from this list that are scattered all over the village yourself in person, top secret stuff, urgent"

Alt:
Hazou:"Hidan, was this Akane's killer?" *vaguely gestures at Shikamaru's head*
Hidan: "Nah, this one was an special request by Jashin, sent me a dream about his head holding some weird power so I took it in his name."
Hazou: "is that... A common occurrence?"
Hidan: "from time to time. he seems to like me collecting smarty-pants skulls and putting them into this big room in his temple. You'll see when you build yours. Takes some time to cover the walls in human skin, but when you do the temperature stays quite low in there. Nice place to nap in summer, we call them Frozen Skin rooms"
Kei:*suddenly arrives, distraught at the scene*
Hidan: "oh hello there Konoha dreamyhead #2!"
 
Rafin said:
Harvesting this town doesn't just put us back by one town that we invested in, it puts us back far further due to ruining our own proof of concept to an officially unproven project. It also more generally makes people reluctant to accept and aid our projects. And this is one of the closest villages to Leaf. It may well be the exactly worst peasant village we could possibly be harvesting, minus maybe the ones we've shown personal interest in.
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I don't think it'll matter too much. Really only one person's opinion matters here, Asuma. What he says, goes. So do we think Asuma will care about this town in particular? I doubt it tbh.

It's a setback in that work was done to make this town a better place to live and that work is wasted. But realistically that's about 3 chunin-days of work. Not a huge deal compared to the counterfactual unimproved town.

Your point is absolutly correct, but the value of these particular people is not drastically higher than another random village IMO.
 
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Chapter 603: Hazō's Aspect
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    • "Remember Hazō, the greatest sin is mercy, and these peasants don't matter. You want Lord Jashin to give you a hand? Lord Jashin helps those who help themselves.

    "So," Hidan said, gesturing broadly with his scythe to the growing population of the town that was coming out of their houses and bowing to the two ninja atop the walls that penned them in. "Help yourself." Hazō looked out across the civilian village below. The village with the wall that ninja had, on his albeit indirect orders, built with the jutsu that a member of his clan had paid to have invented. The village with the people who were better fed because ninja had, in accordance with an idea that Hazō had inspired in the patriarch of his clan, used jutsu and seals to irrigate fields, remove stumps, and turn over soil in order to eliminate dangerous microlife and ease plowing. And so very much more. The people here were better-fed than they had been a year ago, they walked with their heads higher, and they didn't flinch when ninja came by.

    Which, in this particular moment, was a serious problem, because the villagers were not running away.

    Well, actually, it didn't really matter. They wouldn't escape Hidan even if they tried and as long as they didn't trigger his predator instincts by acting like prey there was still a possibility that Hazō could turn this around.

    How to do that? Hidan wasn't going to accept a bargain or pleas for mercy. Theological arguments were the only way to get through to him, but what? Hidan was the expert on Jashin; Hazō couldn't hope to know the arguments better than the older ninja did. And whatever arguments he made, he had to mean them. Hidan would pick up on a lie or a rationalization instantly and all possibility of discussion would end. Hazō would need to murder all the civilians or die himself, and if he chose death then Hidan would still murder the villagers because that was what he did.

    What possible argument could Hazō make that he believed and would be persuasive??? There was nothing, he couldn't— This wasn't—

    He caught himself as his thoughts cartwheeled out of control, his breathing accelerating and pulse suddenly racing. Calm, said the voice of Mari-sensei. We are exhaling stress and panic. We are inhaling calm and relaxation. He breathed, remembering the careful watch she had kept over him as he practiced and the small smile when he managed it correctly.

    There still was nothing. Not a trace of an idea.

    He briefly considered tapping into his experience of the Out, throwing his mind into that off-kilter and inhuman perspective that allowed him to see behind the Paint and be such a brilliant sealmaster. Anything to get his mind out of its current useless rut.

    No. The Out was useful when dealing with seals and actively harmful when attempting communication with other humans about delicate social matters. Yes, Hazō had gotten very lucky, once, when the Out had made him so disconnected that he had mocked Itachi instead of being afraid of him. Yes, he had walked out of that encounter alive and successful, but only through incredible luck. He hadn't known what he was saying and had driven Itachi into a murderous rage, the consequences of which he only survived because he amused Hidan. If Hazō tried the same trick again then he would be speaking to and probably angering Hidan, and there was no other demigod around to save him. No, the Out would never be useful for anything aside from sealing.

    He needed a theological argument. What did he know about Jashin that he could exploit...? A god of death who demanded sacrifice. Dichotomously, a god of lust who demanded sex. A god of balance. A god of conviction who hated mealy-mouthed arguments and rationalizations. He would help those who served him. Serving him required murder. Murder of sapients. His power was real and highly visible in the way Hidan had survived the Battle on the Beach, and in the way the dice had slanted themselves to Hazō's will during the 'game' at Bakuchioka when Hidan had made Hazō gamble for the lives of the civilians.

    Could Hazō insist on another dice game? Claim that he wanted to commune with Jashin in order to get his opinion? Maybe he could...wait. God of conviction. God of balance. God of dichotomous and opposed purposes.

    Hazō turned to face Hidan. "No."

    Hidan leaned on his scythe and raised an eyebrow. "I think I might have misheard you there, boy. Care to say again?"

    "I said no, I'm not going to kill these people. It's not my role."

    "Your role is whatever Lord Jashin says it is."

    "Exactly," Hazō said, nodding. "And my role is to be the balance to yours. You said it yourself: Lord Jashin is a god of balance. He demands death, and he demands birth. You have only represented his Death aspect—or, at least, you have given far more attention to his Death aspect than his Birth aspect. I hadn't realized it until this very moment, but that's why he helped me beat you at Bakuchioka: I am to be your equal and opposite. You are Death, and you reap souls for him. I am Birth, and I grow humanity's numbers that there will be more souls for you to reap." Crap, Hidan wasn't buying it and was opening his mouth to interrupt.

    "Obviously it's not that simple," Hazō said, raising a hand preemptively. "This is an impure world and nothing in it is only one thing. He wants both of us to dabble in both roles but focus on one. I am to make sacrifice and cause Death, sometimes. You are to support the cause of Birth, sometimes. I kill those who interfere in my domain, you raise up those who support yours." Yes, this was a good line to argue. Hidan looked uncertain.

    "Think, Hidan," Hazō said, extending a hand in invitation. "You are his High Priest. You have murdered half a continent in his name. You have made sacrifice to him every day for years—perhaps decades. He favors you above all others...except when we met at Bakuchioka. Why would Lord Jashin help a young and untried boy defeat his honored and faithful champion? He was sending us a message, and I didn't understand it until this very moment."

    "He was...approving you," Hidan said slowly.

    Hazō nodded. "Yes. He made me win, allowed my aspect of Birth to take the day. But! It wasn't completely one-sided. He still wanted you to sacrifice some of the villagers. Had I won every roll, that would have meant that he was turning away from you, but he wasn't! All he was doing was telling you to listen to me, that we each had our roles to play. That he needed balance in his representation here in the world."

    Hidan digested that. "We ended up killing a third of the people there and saving two-thirds. I guess he's sayin' you should kill half as many as I do."

    Hazō shook his head quickly. "No, I don't think it was that precise. You said it yourself: Lord Jashin doesn't want to do all the work for us. He points the way and leaves us to figure out the details on our own. If he told us exactly what the proportions should be then we would just be puppets, not servants. If he wanted us to be puppets then he would simply make us puppets. The fact that we aren't means that he doesn't value puppets."

    Hidan snorted. "Don't go tellin' Sasori that. He'll pout."

    "Uh, sure? Whatever. Anyway, point is: you and I are both servants of Jashin—Lord Jashin—but we represent different aspects of him. My aspect is Birth, and I've been doing it. I've been protecting the civilians of Fire and raising up their numbers so that there will be more and more births. These people here, in this village? They are some of the ones that I have been specifically raising up. Killing them would be against my aspect and therefore against what Lord Jashin wants from me as I understand it."

    "And you think you understand Lord Jashin better than I do, do you?"

    "Yes, I do. I didn't until you showed me the way, and on an average day you would know him better than I would. Right here, right now? Yes, I think I know what he wants. I could feel him in my heart, nudging me towards this conclusion." He took a breath and stood straight. "I'm not going to kill these people, Hidan. It's not what Lord Jashin wants of me and it wouldn't please him. He wants me to kill people who work against his aspect of Birth."

    Hidan chewed on those words for far too long, staring Hazō in the eyes the whole time.

    Hidan accepts the argument. Will he decide to kill the village himself? On a 40 or below he will leave them be.

    1d100: 60

    Nope.


    "A'right," he said at last. "We'll find some other folks for you to kill so you can get your quota in. Kakuzu and I saw some bandit sign on the way to Leaf, shouldn't take more than two, three hours to track 'em down."

    Hazō let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Great. Point the way."

    Hidan chinned towards the woods. "That way, just off the western road. They jumped a merchant or somethin'. Killed him, dumped the body in the woods. They did their best to clean up but there were still a few spots of blood on the road and a couple of broken branches leading into the trees. They'll be near the road so they don't have to commute too far to find their prey—civilian near, not ninja near. They'll be near water, and they'll have made something of a path to the road." He shook his head in disgust. "You'd think they'd be careful, vary their approach to the road so the ground don't get worn. Sometimes they do, for a while, but eventually some dumbass can't be bothered and they end up leavin' an obvious path."

    "Easier for us," Hazō said. "Let's go." He turned in the direction Hidan had indicated.

    "Gotta do one thing first," Hidan said, blurring away before a suddenly-panicking Hazō could catch his arm.

    Hazō closed his eyes, fists balled in pain and fury as the screams of the villagers echoed in his ears. He had at least not had to kill these people himself, but that was extremely cold comfort indeed.




    XP AWARD: 5

    Brevity XP: 0

    It is now about 10pm. Hazō and Hidan spent the day tracking down a group of bandits. Once found, Hazō was required to kill all eleven of them (eight men, three women) while Hidan watched. Hidan did not allow him to use seals on this occasion; he already granted that they probably count, but for this remedial sacrificing session he wanted to be 100% sure that the sacrifices would be acceptable to Lord Jashin. Hazō got seven of the bandits (five men, two women) in his first pass and then had to chase the other four through the woods when they scattered.

    The only good news was that there was plenty of evidence in the camp that these people were bandits who had been killing, robbing, and doing other horrible things for a long time. Hazō is feeling a little bit uncomfortable about literally having blood on his hands but is mostly okay with it. After all, they were bad people.

    Right? They were bad people, so killing them is okay?

    You are now home in the Gōketsu estate. Hidan and Kakuzu are somewhere else but they did say they would be sticking around for a couple days, so expect to have more contact with them.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .
     
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    • Well. We did the best we could, we didn't commit treason, and we didn't die.

    I'd say that's, you know, pretty alright.
     
    A seemingly untenable situation saved because there are dozens of people analyzing everything a madman says and trying to BS their way out, truly the best/worst bloodline limit is having SV have an indirect line into your brain.
     
    Golden Eyed King said:
    A seemingly untenable situation saved because there are dozens of people analyzing everything a madman says and trying to BS their way out, truly the best/worst bloodline limit is having SV have an indirect line into your brain.
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    Was it saved really? Those people are all still dead. If Jashin really does bless His faithful it might have been better to do as Hidan said and kill them ourselves. We'd certainly put the blessing to better use than he will.
     
    Welp, I don't think that could have reasonably come out much better than it did, which is a little disappointing.

    We should immediately debrief with Asuma, discuss what the fuck he wants us to do, and then try to make some moves on our other priorities.

    Where are we with the Conclave and getting caught up?

    Where are we with...what else do we care about right now? Seal research?
     
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