- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
This, honestly.
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
- Location
- Yes.
This, TBH.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Said this on discord, but like... kinda doesn't matter either way lmao. Like whatever theyve got is going to pale in comparison not just to things we can already make but the things we'll be making in the next few years, the hoard we'll get from Jiraiya, etc. If they want to be a stick in the mud and keep their pretty mid stuff then i dont think it actually hurts anyones chances of survival
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
The problem is acting as if that's true, not whether it is or not. You do have to respect people if you want respect back.
Well, if you don't have an Intimidate higher than 5, anyway.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not saying Hazou should act like that??? Not sure what that's coming from.
I'm saying we don't need to stress over getting their shit, because from a meta perspective it very likely doesn't matter. It's not going to be something game changing. If we wanted that we have plenty of better options
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Right, I'm just saying not to say that to them.
- Location
- Texas
Certain Goketsu: "Hazo is awful! He shared dozens of seals and jutsu with us but he kept back cool stuff that could have saved us!"
There was no cool stuff held back during the war.
Also those Certain Goketsu: "Wait, you want me to share what I have with the other Goketsu? I'm leaving the clan."
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I notice that I am confused. The impression I have of Leaf, as it has been described various times throughout the story, is that it is a collection of micro-nations in the form of Clans, who only grudgingly surrendered some of their autonomy to the institution of the Hokage and jealously hoards the privileges they still have. More poignantly, these clans are in a state of perpetual paranoia about their clan secrets and successfully enshrined the enforcement of said secrets into the foundational laws of Leaf.
My baseline expectation is that the standard provision for "a member of a clan wishes to leave and share their secrets with another clan, or maybe Leaf at large" is "you are not allowed to do that, and if you try we will kill you". That's how I imagine it worked in the Warring Clans Era, with quite a lot of confidence, and I struggle to see the Clans agreeing to this "Hidden Leaf" project if it meant surrendering that right. After all, any Clan that's made it this far is going to know that bad actors are an inevitability, and that you only survive as a clan by keeping them from inflicting catastrophic damage against you.
So I have a strong expectation that the laws at the formation of Leaf would not include provisions allowing someone to leave a clan without recourse, taking any and all secrets with them free to share with whoever they like. Even accounting for the fact that clans keep their best stuff to inner circles, such people would only have a lower rate of betraying the clan, not zero. The risk would still be immeasurably great, in the eyes of every clan.
Is this a recent thing, with the rise of the KEI? If so, how did it not get demolished by a unified front of clans terrified at the prospect? I struggle to think of a scenario, any scenario, that would get the clans to agree to this situation. Would the Minami have had to fight for their lives against Lord Hyuuga, who used his authority as their Clan Head to demand their deaths without ordinary Leaf law intervening (and only being thwarted by executive action by the Hokage allowing the Minami to form their own clan), if they were permitted to simply leave the Hyuuga whenever they please?
In this same chapter, it is said that getting access to a clan's secrets is one of the main reasons to be adopted in the first place. It would be extremely hard to say that every adopted ninja is properly and fully vetted for loyalty before they are given access to clan secrets (remember that even those raised in the clan will be expected to have some rate of bad actors, let alone outsiders). So, failing that, the only options seem to be "precautions exist to stop said ninja from walking away with the secrets and spreading them" and "any secrets a clan is willing to share with adoptees cannot be expected to remain secret for very long". It is also known adoption was not uncommon even before the events of the quest, when a talented clanless ninja showed promise: the risk profile existed in the past as much as in the present.
Heck, for that matter, if these laws are as Kei said, could you not get people agreeing to adoption with premeditated intention to betray the clan? I suppose at that point you're liable to get a kunai to the neck in a dark alley, but this again stands out to me as a security risk that would make every Leaf clan extremely concerned. Revenge or not, you can't put a secret back in the bag. Forget the KEI not wanting to hand out any adoption tickets, what clan would want to adopt ninjas at all if this is on the table?
Perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe it really is a new innovation, ushered in with the KEI or thereabouts, and the Clans were so shaken up by the debilitating events around then (BotG, Collapse) that they were in no position to argue against it. Maybe there's widespread sentiment against it that simply hasn't boiled over yet. Maybe it's an open secret that, like Mari implied, anyone who tries to leave with clan secrets wouldn't survive the experience no matter what the laws say. But then why have the laws in the first place? It just seems so at odds with everything else we know about how Leaf operates.
I sort of share this impression, as I would have assumed it is not okay to leave a clan and join another and certainly not for anyone below jounin and not without provisions, but it would be okay to, for example, leave a clan and join the ANBU or get into a similar situation where you're not loyal to another clan primarily, but the Hokage. Or to "leave" a clan with the Kage's countersign, in the sense that you don't really interact with them anymore nor obey the Clan Head etc, but don't actually, officially leave it.
I just don't see how clan secrets could be preserved as a thing over generations of ninja if a non-jounin ninja can not only freely leave a clan to join another, but then also immediately share their former clan secrets with it, at or without their new Clan Head's insistence.
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- Location
- United States
It's actually even worse than that. Once someone outside the clan knows a secret, it is no longer a "Clan Secret" and loses all legal protection. We literally would be expecteded to share it for the greater good of Leaf for "fair compensation," legally speaking.
I don't see how Clan Secrets in Leaf can still exist if:
1. Anyone can just resign from their Clan with no consequences.
2. Once they do all their previously Clan Secret stuff loses all legal protection.
Any major Clan is going to have a couple defectors over 70(!) years. Ninja life is high stress and many Clan Heads are quite controlling.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that the Clans themselves quietly kill anyone who looks like they're going to defect and then claim they went "missing"
1. Anyone can just resign from their Clan with no consequences.
2. Once they do all their previously Clan Secret stuff loses all legal protection.
Any major Clan is going to have a couple defectors over 70(!) years. Ninja life is high stress and many Clan Heads are quite controlling.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that the Clans themselves quietly kill anyone who looks like they're going to defect and then claim they went "missing"
If a clan secret gets leaked. So not intentionally shared. The hokage helps plug the leak
- Location
- United States
What kind of time commitment would this be for the guiding sealmaster?
I think if you don't tag all three QMs, this doesn't necessarily make it to their Q&A TBD doc.
@Paperclipped @Velorien @eaglejarl is that correct? Also while you're here, my reading of this WOG was that this "guiding sealmaster" mechanic only applied if they were spending FP and working full time to assist the researching sealmaster. I also wanted to clarify this means that they spend all your prep days working with you.
Rules Doc said:
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I would like to note that there is possibly a distinction between a multi-element technique and a bloodline technique that uses a combined element.
Canon has the latter. There is potentially some room for "Jutsu which have Wind and Water element jutsu" rolled into one castable technique that gives a distinct result than "This is Storm Release" (EDIT: Which is not comprised of those elements in Canon but shrug lol), but YMMV.
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- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I can, but I know myself and try to limit my interactions with the mechanics.
Clans have overwhelmingly been family prior to this. You'd be resigning from your flesh and blood and not have anywhere to really go: see, Hana going from scion of a powerful clan to living in poverty.
And she also kept their secrets because she felt loyalty to the Kurosawa, even if she disagreed with them on some pretty key stuff.
Sure, but there's a few things here which are different.
- Clans probably don't give adoptees the good stuff. We gave our adoptees the good stuff right away.
- Adoptees don't normally have many options: clans don't want to adopt traitors so they'd be clanless again but every clan would hate them. Not only is the playing field much more level, and not only do they have the KEI to fall back on, but plenty of clans would happily support these people if only to blacken our eyes.
- Adoptees couldn't have expected much in the way of protection - again, clans hate them, and clans have all the power. If they leave, they play ball, or else.
Chapter 609: Stacking Buffs
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Another meeting," Noburi groused, setting his barrel down next to his chair with an altogether louder thud than was warranted. "Must be a day ending in Y, as in 'y am I here and not doing something useful at the hospital?'"
"That was my initial reaction as well," Kei agreed. "However, I soon found myself reconsidering the matter from a more, dare I say it, positive angle. After all, were Hazō not diverting us from our important daily business in order to consult us, he would instead be making the same decisions unilaterally."
"I retract everything I said," Noburi replied instantly. "Hazō, I'm here for you whenever you need me. In fact, even if you think you don't need me, you should call me anyway just in case."
Hazō rolled his eyes. "You two are a never-ending font of moral support. As it happens, today I've called you here about something that concerns you personally. Or, well, mainly you and Mari personally, but with the stakes being what they are, it seemed like a good time to call on the rest of the Gōketsu brains trust too."
Noburi's smirk transformed into a proper expression of ninja alertness. Kei and Snowflake exchanged glances.
"That seems rather cruel to Kagome," Snowflake observed without actually disagreeing with his description.
"Kagome-sensei is possibly Leaf's most brilliant mind when it comes to the pure art of destruction," Hazō began.
"If one sets aside minor details such as collateral damage and the question of whether a threat existed in the first place," Kei added.
"If one sets aside minor details," Hazō agreed. "I will definitely get him involved at the appropriate stage, but right now we're here to make the kind of preparations people outside the family absolutely can't hear about yet. We need to talk about Akatsuki, and we don't know what kind of spies Akatsuki have in Leaf."
"Huh," Mari said. "And here I thought the topic of the day would be 'what's the most efficient way to wipe out the Hagoromo?'"
"We'll get to them one of these days," Hazō said, brushing the question away with the wave of a hand. "Right now, I'm interested in the wolves at the door, not the puppies desperately nipping at our heels."
"Do we know they have spies in Leaf?" Noburi asked. "Those Nagi Island berserkers aside, Akatsuki have been kind of conspicuous about doing everything themselves."
"They had to hear about the Third's ill-fated mission somehow," Mari said, "and I doubt those agents were in Leaf by coincidence. Also, everybody who gets to jōnin, never mind S-rank, knows that good intel is what makes the difference between life and death more often than any number of powerful tricks. Akatsuki are crazy, not stupid."
"Right," Hazō said. "Which is why it's high time we started preparing countermeasures. When the rift opens, or maybe even before, we may have to fight one or more of them, which means we need to start gathering power for that confrontation now.
"Mari, you're our strongest ninja. In fact, you're one of Leaf's strongest. Are there any Akatsuki you think you could beat one-on-one?"
"First get your Akatsuki to fight one-on-one," Mari said. "Raw firepower aside, the thing that makes Akatsuki so dangerous compared to your usual missing-nin is that they always have a partner to guard their back. But assuming I can get one on their own…"
She began to count down on her fingers.
"Hidan's probably my best shot. Physical immortality won't do him any good against genjutsu, and with shadow clones, I can use it while staying out of range of his scythe. On the other hand…"
"He apparently possesses the blessing of a supernatural being capable of affecting probability," Kei said. "Considering that high-level battles are often determined by a single successful strike that places the target at an unrecoverable disadvantage, the ability to, for example, force a failed attack to connect, or vice versa, could be fully as decisive as the ability to withstand a mortal blow."
Mari nodded. "Luck is the second strongest force on the battlefield after intel, and if Jashin's really real, we have no idea what kind of miracles he can pull off to protect his chosen. It would explain how Hidan's still around when I can think of a dozen hard counters to somebody whose only known skill is hitting people with his scythe."
"Doubtless he has access to other abilities as well," Snowflake said. "To give one example, Maito Gai was well-known to be a master of blindfighting. It would not surprise me at all if Hidan, a fellow elite melee specialist, were to have trained the same skilll, allowing him to negate standard genjutsu simply by closing his eyes once at his preferred range. After all, it beggars belief that the psychopath who enthusiastically seeks out challenging opponents would never have faced genjutsu specialist jōnin."
"Yup," Mari said. "Unfortunately, the others are even worse. We talked this through with Ami when she was giving me her Akatsuki intel the other day. My speciality is infiltration, not combat, and that's not going to get me far unless I join Akatsuki and go for the assassination approach. I think we can all agree that's not likely."
They all nodded.
"My CQC's not bad, and I've picked up some quality ninjutsu over the years, including the Pangolin techniques–but it doesn't add up to multiple jōnin's worth of power, and being able to kill multiple jōnin at a time is a prerequisite for S-rank. If it comes to a fight, I have to leverage my best asset, which is my genius for genjutsu.
"That means, for example, that Sasori's right out. His puppets won't care. There's a chance that he'll keep them back and fight with seals instead, since his collection took a beating at Nagi Island and Ami says he's been complaining about difficulties getting high-quality materials to replace it, but if I take that gamble and lose, I lose. Itachi's not an option either–he took out Naruto by making eye contact, and whatever he did, it propagates through shadow clones as well. If Konan turns into paper, she won't have eyes, plus she's a long-range combatant who can fly and use wide-area attacks. So is Deidara. Even with skywalkers, that's a bad match for a mid-range ability. Might work if I can catch Deidara on the ground and keep him there, but I'd need some way to survive his explosives if he strikes first or shrugs off my initial attempt.
"I don't think anyone's quite clear on what Kakuzu does or how, but it seems like he has some kind of demonic minions, and I have no idea if genjutsu works on those.
"That leaves Kisame. Now, Kisame doesn't have any known abilities that make him genjutsu-proof, so he's an option. He's merely one of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen, with summons and ninjutsu backed by, according to Ami, Tailed Beast-tier chakra reserves. Assuming sharks are vulnerable to genjutsu, which I see no reason why they wouldn't be, I should be able to match them with my shadow clones, unless he summons a dozen at once or something. That would leave me, personally, trying to nail him with genjutsu before he closes to melee and uses his legendary sword to chop me into chum or retreats to long range and bombards me with heavy ninjutsu."
"The important thing," Hazō said after a few seconds to soak in that uninspiring analysis, "is that some of those matchups are winnable. After that, it's just a matter of tilting the odds our way. How does a set of world-class custom-designed seals sound to you?"
"Keep talking," Mari purred.
"Just tell me what you need. Even if it's something that seems ridiculous, I have some tricks up my sleeve that might be able to make it work."
"I need some way to survive for a few seconds while I prepare and make eye contact," Mari said. "A transparent barrier, for example, that I can see through while it stops their attacks. Something to keep them in range, too. We already have Goo Bombs, but more options would be better. I'll be relying on the Shadow Clone Technique, so anything that helps my chakra reserves will make a big difference, as will anything that helps the clones last longer or give me more flexibility on how to use them. Obviously, not having to stand like a statue while my mind control is active would be a game-changer if you can pull that off."
"I note," Kei said, "that Leaf has had multiple S-rank sealmasters and technique hackers with the Shadow Clone Technique, and none of them have been able to improve on it beyond the Second's final version."
"Perhaps they did not wish to," Snowflake countered. "For all we know, there are countless improvements that could be applied, save that they require granting greater autonomy to one's convenient slaves. I can effortlessly imagine the likes of Senju Tobirama discovering a way to increase the duration of shadow clones, only to reject it because the increased divergence would undermine our willingness to die for our creators."
"Perhaps," Kei said placatingly. "But the point is moot insofar as none of us possess the necessary skills to analyse the technique and identify which of its limitations can be bypassed."
"More speed," Mari went on, "since genjutsu is very much a 'first strike wins' ability. Something that shuts down physical attacks from both sides, maybe. There are a lot of tradeoffs you could make, in theory, given that genjutsu mostly can't be dodged and doesn't need to do damage to take effect, and a fight against S-rankers is mostly going to be about me surviving long enough to use it."
"Got it," Hazō said. There were a lot of options to explore there, some of them pretty exciting to a veteran sealmaster ready for a new project. Except, it suddenly occurred to him, he really wasn't a veteran sealmaster ready for a new project. He was a veteran sealmaster already in the middle of a race against time and Akatsuki to complete the rift research without which all of this would be pointless, to say nothing of the wonders of 3D sealing finally within reach and begging to be researched without delay (and which also came with a timer he couldn't neglect). He had no idea how he was going to prioritise this.
"Let me know if you think of anything else," he said. "Next up is you, Noburi. You've already got the chakra to summon boss-tier toads to make Akatsuki weep. You just need the contracts."
Noburi frowned. "Uh, Hazō, it's not that I don't appreciate the vote of confidence, but summons are only up while the summoner's alive. All Hidan has to do is ignore the summon and go for me, and much as I hate to say it, right now he could probably one-shot me without too much difficulty."
"Maybe," Hazō said, "but the first step of solving the problem is to figure out how to get Hidan swallowed by a giant toad. As long as we get that covered, the defence side is something we can sort out with seals and strategy. More to the point, we're not going out of our way to fight Akatsuki because we feel like it. We're planning for a battle that may have to happen as the only way of stopping them from killing us and/or taking over the world. If that battle comes, you have the potential to be one of our heaviest hitters.
"Could you get a contract with the Toad Boss if you had all the resources and wisdom of the Gōketsu Clan behind you?"
"Not a chance," Noburi said. "Jiraiya got the scroll as an experienced jōnin and it still took him years to wear Gamabunta down."
"I cannot comment on the way of the Dogs, Kei said, "but the way I had it presented to me by the Pangolins is that a clan boss is the equivalent of a Kage, and a Kage will not descend onto the battlefield to battle for a genin–not merely because the genin is capable of calling for him, or because the genin offers bribes to add to the Kage's already vast wealth, or because the Kage happens to have no pressing business at that moment, or because the genin is battling a Kage-worthy enemy. In fact, especially the latter, since while summons do not die permanently upon the Human Path, the backlash of forced unsummoning scales with the power of the summon, and allowing a clan boss to be thus incapacitated is a risk to national security. Consider what Conjura might do if I were to summon Pantsā and then my enemy caused him to be incapacitated and unable to defend the Pangolin Clan."
Hazō suspected this was one reason why Kei would never get her own boss summon.
"I get all that," he said. "I was thinking of a temporary, one-off contract. I'm not proposing Noburi have a boss at his beck and call. Just that at some point within the next few months, Gamabunta might be willing to save Noburi's life because, let's face it, the Toads are never going to get a better summoner."
Noburi gave a sheepish smile.
"If you don't think he's going to go for it for you," Hazō went on, "why not tell him about our plan to resurrect Jiraiya? Even if he's not that impressed by you yet, we know those two had a long-standing bond, and surely he wouldn't leave his old summoner in the lurch when there was a chance to rescue him without much cost to himself."
"It could work," Noburi acknowledged, "though the whole rift idea sounds crazy to me, and it's going to sound a lot crazier to a summon from another Path who knows nothing about sealing failures and rifts and might not even believe that's how the afterlife works in the first place, especially if he's a Toadist."
"It's a long shot," Hazō agreed, "but I don't think there's anything to lose by trying. The other idea is trying to get hold of Toad ninjutsu for Mari. We know they have human-usable ninjutsu because of Jiraiya, and if it was one of the things that propelled him to S-rank…"
Noburi winced. "I can ask, but there's a fair chance that the Pangolins have screwed that up for us."
"What do you mean?"
"I believe," Kei said, "that he is referring to the ninjutsu side of the skytower deal, where the Pangolins believed they were offering their ninjutsu to a single small family, only to subsequently discover that it would likely spread to dozens of people, each an OPSEC risk for that ninjutsu's propagation. That we live surrounded by other summoners, who would surely share any stolen or purchased ninjutsu with their summon clan to the Pangolins' direct disadvantage, only adds injury to injury. As allies of the Pangolins, there is no chance that the Toads are unaware of this cautionary tale of what becomes of those who break with tradition out of greed, and share ninjutsu with persons other than the summoner."
Hazō sighed. "We should try anyway. In the meantime, we can at least make sure to get you some contracts. Noburi, can you get some time off from the hospital to wander around the Seventh Path making friends and influencing people?"
"Hey, it beats taking time off for meetings."
"Great," Hazō said. "Do that. You have all the financial and creative power of the Gōketsu behind you."
"More terrifying words were never spoken," Kei muttered.
"Now you're getting it."
"As for Snowflake and myself," Kei said, "I believe there is yet plenty of unplumbed potential within the Nara arts, but first I should acquire the advanced OPSEC training necessary to actually keep those arts safe. In retrospect, I should have structured my learning in the opposite order. Clearly, my planning skills have atrophied from relying on you to manage my training all this time."
"Which is not to say we are not grateful," Snowflake cut in. "Were it not for your scheduling expertise, I would not be deluged with the bounty of hours that presently defines my existence."
"Additionally, while the foundational principles of your training schemata continue to elude me, some of your insights on efficient cross-training are nothing short of revelatory," Kei said. "While I appreciate that they are a source of Gōketsu competitive advantage, I would say there is a compelling case to be made for releasing them to the public nonetheless, perhaps in the form of a detailed manual. KEI shinobi in particular, lacking the clan training systems refined over centuries, must largely proceed by guesswork in prioritising their training. This is a problem we have yet to solve, since the Mori systems are ineffective for those who lack a sufficient base education, even setting aside Bloodline Limit requirements, while Naruto's training was custom-tailored to him by elite tutors. Within the KEI itself, of course, the veterans with superior training knowledge they could share used that knowledge to propel themselves to jōnin rank, only to perish before the KEI's foundation–Maito Gai and Hatake Kakashi being key examples–while the next wave was largely scythed down by the war."
"I'll give it some thought," Hazō said. It was an issue that periodically crossed his mind: the Gōketsu needed every advantage they could get to defy and overturn a civilisation that respected only military might, but at the same time, every asset hoarded had a cost directly counted in human lives. While Mio was incorrect in assuming that the Gōketsu had kept life-saving secrets from her sister during the war (though it was hard to blame her entirely for the assumption, considering the clan elders went out to the forest every morning to conduct special training the adoptees were forbidden to observe), it was a fact that there were lives that could have been saved if they'd shared more assets outside the clan, like the Rocket Boots that had once saved Haru but not his underequipped KEI teammate. Hazō was still convinced that following shinobi tradition was better in this instance, that Uplift simply wasn't possible if the Gōketsu didn't have clan secrets that made them stronger than their rivals. Still, the knowledge that he was letting people die for the sake of his own power never stopped eating away at him, just a little bit.
He hoped that it always would. Ami said that regret was an anchor for one's humanity, which was so easily lost as you reached higher and higher; Hazō saw it as an anchor for his desire to reach higher and higher, which was so easily lost when you gave in to your humanity.
Of course, it was simple for him. It was less simple for Kei. Not that anything was simple for the woman who constantly alternated between complicating her own life and having others do it for her, but she had taken on a direct, personal responsibility to protecting the lives of the KEI shinobi, and he wondered how much it frustrated her to confine the Gōketsu secrets to a handful of people whose lives were hardly ever in danger anyway even as she watched her subordinates die. He hoped that wasn't another timer counting down to doom, because while he had solved 3D sealing and was in the process of solving Akatsuki, in this particular case he couldn't begin to imagine what to do.
He shook himself out of his morose contemplation. The meeting wasn't over, and he couldn't afford to dwell on his feelings while his family was counting on him and his ideas to forge a way forward against all the odds.
"There's one last thing," he said. Noburi, who'd been staring into space himself, jerked to attention, while Mari shifted out of her mysterious contemplation of Kei.
"We've all been busy–obviously, or you wouldn't all be complaining about being torn away from your jobs. Unfortunately, the price of being busy dealing with economics, and paperwork, and all the other nonsense we have to power through just to get anything done around here–stop glaring at me, Kei, I'm sure your paperwork is vitally important and you'd rather spend all day on it than having to deal with people–is that bit by bit, our battle instincts start to dull. I can feel it every time I spar with Yuno, how all the moves are still there, but I don't chain them as fast as I used to because my reflexes are getting numb. It's a horrible sensation.
"I don't want to lose any more of my edge than I already have. Actually, I want it sharper, because many of the Academy teachings were terrible in retrospect, but I'm more sure than ever that Kikō-sensei was spot on about having to balance mind and body if you wanted to reach your peak as a ninja. With that in mind, how about we go on a family trip to rid the world of some deadly horror or other sometime soon? I'll be taking any and all suggestions, but just please don't say Jashin because I have no idea where he lives and people might misunderstand if they find out I'm going for a visit."
"Tempting as it is to arbitrarily risk my life in the name of slightly superior kunai-throwing performance," Kei said, "I am already serving suitably dangerous duty on the Hyena border as penance for our actions at the Conclave, and it is only due to the combined efforts of Mari, Shikamaru, and Snowflake that I have been able to negotiate sufficient leeway to cling to my Human Path existence by the skin of my teeth."
"I could do with some kind of heroics if I'm ever going to impress the Toads enough to cough up the good stuff," Noburi said. "Maybe I'll check in with them and see if there are any loose ends left over from Jiraiya's days. Other than that, the southern islands are supposedly full of monsters and treasure, and we're more likely to bribe the pirate lords into letting us wander around their territory having adventures than we are those pesky eastern continent clans."
"If you're serious about this," Mari said, "every spy network and cartographer's guild has bounties for maps of the Forbidden West, past Bear, Mountain, and Wind. People who go exploring over thataway have a tendency not to come back, or come back gibbering."
"While I remain convinced that this is a terrible idea," Kei added, "I could browse the Nara archives, which feature a number of files marked 'avoid at all costs'. Some of them have not been reviewed for decades, perhaps centuries, and may contain an entity which is conservatively within the modern-day Gōketsu's capabilities."
"Thanks, guys," Hazō said. "I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
"Any other business before I let you go to treat patients and kill Hyenas and whatever?"
"One thing," Mari said. "You asked me to keep an eye on the adoptees and their dynamics, and I'm increasingly convinced that we need to slow the pace of adoptions. We're already outnumbered, and I have a feeling things are going to go horribly wrong if the handful of us try to manage more and more people when we barely have time for what we've got, all while we still have issues with the clan culture. I'm not saying we risk facing a rebellion or anything, but, well, let's just say it's not a good idea to rock the boat too much when in many ways we're still flying blind when it comes to running a clan, plus our attention's already taken up with other things."
"Got it," Hazō said. "Thank you all for coming."
"I only hope that the decisions taken today will ultimately spell Akatsuki's doom and not our own," Kei said by way of valediction.
-o-
You have received 4 XP and 1 FP (refresh).
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What do you do?
Voting closes on
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- Location
- Pacific standard
Guys remember when I talked about lines that scream DO THIS OR FLUB NEXT PLAN?
This. 4fsop. We need to research it. It gives Mari a chance against s rankers. I'm doing my part guys, this is the intuition SCREAMING thing.
This. 4fsop. We need to research it. It gives Mari a chance against s rankers. I'm doing my part guys, this is the intuition SCREAMING thing.
- Location
- Texas
Even if we voted this in for next plan, it wouldn't be complete for a couple of months.
You mean Hazo's stat-o-vision?
- Location
- Pacific standard
And if we put it off it won't be done for 6 months which is too late for the next s ranker inturrupt in 4 months, for example.
It's time to learn 4fsop. It is such a huge addition to our toolbelt.
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