- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is what I get when I run the tally from post #233432, which was Velorien's latest post (a Sidestory post):
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 open voting
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Yeah I dunno what the deal is with it.
I can see that vote in EJ's tally, might be a display issue on your end
- Location
- Yes.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A Labor Day Update, woot woot!
Hah! Start of meeting formalities observed.
Need buff stacks for combat. Need our thinky buffs for meetings.
Hmm!
Or is that what you want us to think? Feels like an S-rank infiltration spec could get up to manyfold mischief if they were not chained to a clan.
Bleak. Very useful to know.
Row, row, fight the power!
O, the evil voice is swelling in the wings. Ssshhhh, Conjura. Not yet.
Cuuute.
Wow, other side of the coin of the politics deficiency. Feels good when the thought and effort put into training plans bleeds through into the narrative.
Eye opening! Never considered this.
Heh. Nephew.
He who lives in a house made of doom timers should not throw fruit.
Funny as a fourth wall break, funny out of context.
What were they thinking?
Fun fun fun.
How every KEI + unknown number of conspiracy meetings adjourn.
Gasp!
Liking her already.
Granite? So is MEW granite because granite is special or is the Great Seal granite because the Sage was busted?
Dog bard troupe.
Awwwww, Cannai. So much to learn from Dog Dad. Cannot wait to see him talk with other Bosses.
Bro... he just never lets us down.
Were all summoner missions operations against border clans? Warrior culture, without chakra beasts. Paints a very murdery picture.
Good chapter! Grateful for the m-m-monsoon of sealing rolls and Earthshaping mechanics work!
Interlude: Ripples
- Location
- USA
Interlude: Ripples
Gōketsu Hiroki placed the bag on the woman's desk. Ryō clinked from within the cloth bag, and despite the fact that he normally liked the sound, Hiroki felt a stab of pain at having to give up so much of his hard earned money. But it would be worth it.
The woman didn't look up from the lengthy ledger she was reviewing for thirty seconds, and Hiroki felt anxiety gnawing at his gut. Hiroki still wasn't the best with math, but he knew enough to tell that the numbers on that ledger would make him sweat if he had to move them back and forth.
"Ah…" she said, finally looking up and trying to place him. "Yu-, no, Gōketsu Hiroki. Here to deliver the last of your clan lord's money to our coffers?"
Hiroki nodded stiffly. He didn't need to engage with her snark, he just needed to get this done.
She stepped away from her desk to grab another ledger book, flipping it open to the only page that mattered, then upended his bag onto the desk. Hiroki felt another stab of pain at seeing the thousands of ryō he had earned in the past several months laid bare and soon to be taken from him. The woman counted them, starting with the large, thick silver pieces that each represented entire days of his labor in the sawmill. He kept count along with her. He wasn't quite adept enough to count fully in his mind, but he could count aloud, and he didn't particularly care if it irritated her as long as she didn't make a mistake.
With his coins separated by type into four clean stacks, she referenced the ledger book, and her eyebrows raised slightly. "Color me surprised, Hiroki. You counted correctly. Eight thousand, one hundred and fifty five ryō. That is the entirety of your remaining debt."
Of course he had counted correctly. He had counted over and over and over again, him and Sae, making sure twice and thrice and ten times again that he wasn't deluding himself, that he really had collected enough money to finally rid himself of the debt he'd spent years accumulating. He would never have even tried to pay off the debt if he hadn't learned how to count, and he hadn't realized that he could actually make it go away in time, instead of just paying its steadily-growing interest forever.
"Is it done, then?" he asked the banker. Please, let it be over.
She raised a finger for him to wait, then inked her brush. She signed something on the ledger, then put a stamp over it in black ink. She flipped to a different page and made some more markings. She drew a piece of paper from another place on her desk and inked another note, signed it, and folded it away. She scraped the coins off the countertop and Hiroki had to stop himself from grabbing her arm to stop her from taking the money until he was set free.
She disappeared for a moment to place the money in the vault, then returned with another set of forms. She scrawled on one, then handed it over to him. "Sign here."
Slowly, Hiroki signed his name.
She took it back as soon as he did, and drew her brush across yet another piece of paper, then stamped it and handed it over to him.
He couldn't read all the words on the paper, not yet, but he could make out the numbers. 8-1-5-5.
"That is the receipt for this payment. Assuming everything is in good order, you have no further payments to make, Hiroki."
"So now it's done?"
"Yes," she said, flipping open the ledger book she had been reviewing at the start. "You may leave."
Hiroki bowed to the woman, even though she didn't seem to notice, and turned. Years of debts from his father, from his failed business, from his gambling and his sister's drinking, gone. He would never have the bank's people come asking him questions again. He could finally keep the entirety of his wage, instead of having to carve off chunks of it to keep the demons of interest at bay. Now, he could finally start saving money. Perhaps he could build a house, or buy a plot of land to farm or garden. He and Sae could have a couple more children, or maybe they could save up to get little Sakurao an apprenticeship with a proper craftsman.
Hiroki straightened up slightly. He wasn't just lighter by 8,155 ryō now. With the chains of his past finally removed from his shoulders, he could start building his future.
o-o-o
"And this is the directional explosive. You can use it to destroy stuff in only one direction. It's good for blowing up stinkers if they get really close to you."
Gōketsu Sasha nodded. Honoka's style of explanation was very, very annoying, but at least the younger girl knew her stuff.
"Can I try?" Sasha asked, giving Honoka a slight smile.
Honoka beamed back and nodded enthusiastically, causing her hair to flare out behind her. "Yeah! Just make sure to not point it at yourself. Point with the side with the ink on it. You're only allowed to point it at stinkers and stuff no one cares about!"
Sasha carefully picked up the seal. Three years ago, this single seal would have been worth more than all the money her father earned in a year. Now, she would burn it in an instant.
She held it out, pointing the inked face of the seal away into the side of the adjacent snowdrift. She activated it.
BOOM!
The snow blasted away in a cone of sparkling white and clear droplets. The snowdrift partially collapsed, snow falling inwards into the newly created gap in the wall, and Honoka cheered.
Sasha couldn't hear much with her ears ringing in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, but she managed to stay upright. She had been expecting some amount of recoil like she'd experienced during the Academy's brief lesson on bows and arrows, but instead there had been nothing. Just a momentary explosion, then she was just holding a regular piece of paper again. She inspected it. Ordinary paper and ink, with a small hole burned in the center.
Thankfully, being the Gōketsu estate, no one particularly minded the sound of explosions. The ringing was slowly subsiding, and she could now hear Honoka yelling about how awesome that was. If only she had more explosives to drown out the younger girl's squeaky voice. Still, Honoka was the one giving her the seals, so she should be nice to Kagome's favorite little student.
"Wow," Sasha said. "That was very cool, Honoka!"
Honoka grinned. Surely Sasha hadn't been this easy to manipulate when she was younger, right?
"Yeah! It was! Now, this one here is the Goo Bomb! It makes a whole lotta blue goo that you can use to trap the stinkers, and once you trap them, you can explode them all over the place, or you can use it to…"
Well, the adults of the estate clearly saw something cute about Honoka. Kagome gave her tens or hundreds of thousands of ryō worth of seals to play around with, and the others took turns training her in various different ninja arts.
Sasha knew she couldn't complain without looking juvenile, though. She'd also struggled for years in the Academy to maintain barely passing grades only for her parents to move to the Gōketsu estate after the Collapse. Suddenly, she'd been surrounded by senior ninja that would answer questions for her or even sometimes take the time to teach her basic things the Academy couldn't. Sasha didn't know if she would ever have figured out treewalking if Atomu hadn't patiently walked her through the steps over and over again for those three weeks, and once that clicked, she had been one of the first of her class to learn waterwalking.
Being a clan ninja was pretty awesome. Maybe not as awesome as it could be, but once she graduated, she would have access to all the same seals that Honoka had. Then, she'd be a real Gōketsu.
"And this one is the Rocket Boot," Honoka said. "Uncle Kagome said I'm not allowed to use it until I learn how to use chakra better, but it's super cool! See, it shoots out this explosion and then…"
o-o-o
Kōji stepped into his house again. The one room building was small, but cozy. A few embers crackled away in the firepit in the center of the room, and a couple of his younger kids were playing some game while close enough to enjoy the firepit's heat. His wife was somewhere out and about, but the pot of stew she'd prepared in the morning was simmering away in a big stockpot. He glanced around to see his son, Kōsei, sharpening his pocketknife on the straw mat laid on the floor by his parent's bed.
"Kōsei, you're late. We're all waiting for you so we can go to the shrine."
Kōsei sighed. "Do I need to come? There are plenty of things I can do in the village."
Kōji stepped over and quickly pulled his son to his feet. He looked the teenager over. He seemed presentable.
"Yes, you need to come," Kōji said, his voice low. "I heard you were messing around with Yūji's daughter the other day. You need to cleanse yourself of the impurity before you bring misfortune on our family."
Kōsei paled at that and nodded stiffly. "Okay Dad, as long as-"
"I won't tell Yūji."
Kōsei relaxed a little as they started walking through the village streets.
"You will."
"Dad," Kōsei complained, "you know he'll-"
"He'll be angry, but he knows Ayaka has to find someone eventually. You just need to convince him you'll be a proper man for her. Don't think about dodging it, or I'll tell him myself."
"Fine," Kōsei said.
They arrived at the village walls and grabbed a pair of spears. Kōji signaled to Misaki to open the sturdy wooden gates, and they started down the short trail to the shrine.
"How come the ninja didn't put the shrine inside the walls?" Kōsei asked, fidgeting slightly with his spear. "Everyone goes to the shrine at least once a week."
"You saw how they made the walls," Kōji said. "Using their magic to pull stone from the earth chunk-by-chunk. It would have taken them a long time to protect the entire path, and for what? They don't care about our shrine. They care about our farmland."
"And our village?"
"Otherwise the beasts would take our grain before we could give it to them."
"You know, Seiji got back from town and said that they're gonna be using that same magic to build big roads to connect up all of Fire."
Kōji scoffed. "Why would they want to do that? They can already go wherever they please, and we don't need to be connected to anywhere. We already have a road to Ushikawa. Anything more seems like a waste. I'd rather they wall up the path to our shrine."
"The ninja are the reason we've had such a good winter, dad. They gotta know what they're doing."
Kōji nodded. "The ninja are the reason we haven't lost anyone yet. But Elder Yoshitaka is the reason the kami were pleased and graced us with a bountiful harvest, and Kazuki is the one that keeps our tools sharp, and without Yūna to tend to the livestock, they all would have died of whiterot. So it's not just the ninja. Don't bother thinking too much about them, Kōsei. You're too old to be a ninja and any interaction with them now is just going to be trouble. Accept what charity they give and stay out of the way when they're angry. Alright?"
"Yes, Dad."
"Ah, don't mope!" Kōji said, as they passed through the shrine's simple gates. "Look, if the walls stay sturdy and the kami are merciful, things are gonna be okay. The seeds we saved for next year are fat and full of life, so next year's harvest will be good too. And if the ninja really do come back and wall up more land by the riverside like they said, you'll have land to build a house for yourself and Ayaka. So wash yourself and go and pay your respects to Elder Yoshitaka. Alright?"
Half-reluctantly, Kōsei nodded and bent down to start washing himself in the icy water of the stream by the village shrine.
o-o-o
"Ah, I'm here to pay my tax?"
Norio looked up with a bored expression. The man who had just come in was obviously a farmer. If the smell hadn't given it away, the simple, home-spun clothes and wide hat would have. He was clutching a bag of ryō, clearly just made by selling grain or livestock or whatever to make the money for his yearly tax stamp.
"Mm. Four thousand five hundred ryō," Norio said. "The usual. You've paid your taxes before, right?"
The farmer nodded, opened his mouth, then hesitated. Norio suppressed an internal sigh. The farmer had clearly heard something.
The man straightened up, trying to look confident, then said. "Yes, I have. I heard that the taxes are lower this year, and that I don't need to pay the full four thousand five hundred."
Norio looked over at Kirito, the other agent of the daimyo's currently on duty. "You heard of something like that, Kirito?"
Kirito shook his head. "Never heard of anything of the sort."
Norio looked back at the farmer and shrugged. "Well, that's that, I guess. Four thousand five hundred, and I'll get you your tax stamp."
The farmer looked conflicted for a second, and seemed like he was going to back down. Norio privately cheered for him to give up, but then the farmer straightened up again. "This is a good part of my livelihood, sir," he said. "I'd appreciate if you checked, carefully. Or is there anyone else who'd know?"
Norio winced. He didn't want to pull in any of the daimyo's actual men.
"Well, couldn't hurt to check. Kirito, could you check the tax code?"
Kirito nodded as Norio flashed him three fingers under the table.
After a second leafing through the various daimyo-decrees, Kirito raised an eyebrow. "Look at that. Tax stamp this year is only forty-three hundred. Four thousand three hundred, sir. That's two hundred less than you said. You were right."
The farmer sighed in relief. "I knew there was something changed. Wait, have you been collecting the wrong amount from everyone so far?"
Norio shrugged. "Ain't been too many people by, and we keep records. We'll check if anyone's been overcharged and return the money to 'em. Now, can I help you count out the right amount?"
The farmer nodded and started counting out the money. Norio helped him keep track, then pulled the ryō onto his side of the desk before preparing a set of papers and stamping and signing it.
"This paper certifies that you have paid your yearly taxes to Daimyo Noriyasu and the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Be careful and do not lose it, or else you could be fined or indentured. Is that clear?"
The farmer nodded.
"Good. Pleasure doing business with you."
As soon as the farmer had left them alone, Norio grabbed a couple coins from the stack. The daimyo only needed to see four thousand ryō, so that left a hundred fifty for himself and a hundred fifty for Kirito. He flipped the coins to Kirito, who deftly slid them into the side of his boot where a padded pocket would keep anyone from noticing them. Another coin went into his sleeve, where it would make sure that the guardsman that searched them at the end of the day wouldn't do too thorough a job.
Norio finished packing up his own cut of the taxes, then put the rest in the office's lockbox. Another job well done. The only real way this could fail was if the farmer checked his tax stamp over and noticed that it only asked for four-thousand. Thankfully the poor sod was extremely illiterate.
The ninja were crazy. The daimyo were already rich, why did they need to let the daimyo get richer? As a tax-man, Norio understood how the system worked. You need to shake down the farmers, but you can't shake them too much or else they'll eat their seed crop and die. You let them keep a little. Then the bosses shake you down, and they let you keep a little. Then the daimyo shake the bosses down, and they let the bosses keep a little. Then the ninja shake the daimyo down, and the daimyo get to keep a little. Well, for a guy like him, the daimyo had a lot, but compared to the ninja it was still a little. That was just the way the world worked.
But instead the ninja decided that they'd let the daimyo keep a lot. Most of the other daimyo in the country were keeping up business as usual and pocketing the difference. Norio was lucky that Daimyo Noriyasu was an idealist fool, and passed on the lower taxes to everyone in his domain. That meant a bigger slice for the tax-men. He and Kirito had made out like thieves for weeks until the word started to spread that the taxes were lowered. Still, they made a nice margin off the rubes coming in. And it wasn't like they could complain, the rubes were basically walking away with double or triple the money they would have had anyway.
Maybe that was the point. The ninja could afford to be a little less rich, so everyone else could be a little more rich. The daimyo, the peasants, and most of all, the tax-men.
Sage bless the tax-men.
o-o-o
The demonic rabbit-porcupine-wolf things were chasing her and she couldn't escape.
Ahead of her, she could see Akari disappearing in the distance. She had more chakra than either of them and had substituted away in the forest. If she and Shunsuke got caught, would the monsters stop to feast on their bodies and let Akari live, or would they continue to chase down their teammate?
Shunsuke was behind her. She made another jump from tree branch to tree branch, she hazarded a glance back at her teammate. Her teammate was heaving, and the beasts were gaining on him. They'd be on him in seconds.
Rieka palmed her shuriken. The beasts were four-legged monstrosities with triple-jointed legs and long, purplish claws. Their torsos were roughly human-sized, but their backs were covered in purple-black quills and their heads had nothing but a vicious jaw and a single, large green eye. When they'd stumbled across the chakra beasts feasting on the body of an unidentifiable other beast, Rieka had been quick to send a shuriken through one of the creature's eyes. That had killed one, but the rest had the intelligence to deflect her weapons. They'd run, but the creatures clearly had enough stamina to sprint for longer than the humans could.
Now, they would die. They'd catch Shunsuke, then they'd probably catch her too. Hopefully both of them would be dead by the time the creatures started to feast.
She paused for a second to throw her shuriken. No luck: the creature in the lead raised a claw and parried the shuriken away from its massive green eye. Now, she had lost her lead, and she turned and sprinted alongside Shunsuke. From here, she could hear the creatures. They weren't just breathing or chattering or anything so simple. Instead, they were gibbering, making sounds that sounded just enough like language that she couldn't help but try to parse out the words in it.
"What do we do!?" Shunsuke yelled between breaths. He was desperate, like he hadn't realized that they were both going to die. Like either of them, nameless meaningless clanless ninja, had some secret technique they could pull out to survive instead of dying in the wilderness like the trash they were.
Except, she did have something now. Didn't she?
"Substitute!" she called out as she reached into her weapons pouch.
"I'm out of chakra!" he yelled.
"Push harder!" she said, as she activated the explosive-tagged kunai and threw it forward into a tree trunk ahead of them.
Time slowed down for a moment as they landed on branches right next to the explosive tag. They both paused for a moment to scour the forest floor for a substitution target, aware that failure would mean a messy death. Rieka dug deep into her chakra coils, scraping them bloody and raw for just a little extra energy.
They substituted, and heard the sound of a resounding BOOM! behind them.
Rieka turned to see the monstrosities falling from the trees. Some of them had lost limbs. Others seemed fine.
Shunsuke was by her side, heaving as he tried to catch his breath. One of the monstrosities straightened up. Rieka's kunai took it right in the center of its eye.
The other surviving monstrosities turned to face her, flexing their claws. They were covered in burns and bruises and cuts, but they closed ranks, almost excited to finish the hunt.
"What now?" Shunsuke asked.
BOOM!
The second explosive tag, attached to the second kunai and buried inside the creature's head, finished the job. The explosion smashed through the beasts nearest the fallen one, and the survivors immediately turned and bounded off into the forest.
"Thanks, Gōketsu Akane," Rieka said. "When we get back, we're gonna need to find out who she was and send her a prayer. C'mon Shunsuke, let's get out of here."
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Educating the masses is already the Nara Future Foundation's job
We don't need to do every humanitarian project in the world, just convince other people that they're worth doing
- Location
- United States
- Location
- United States
I don't really care about who does it or whether we see it on screen as long as it gets done.
- Location
- Seattle
I stan incremental systemic gains. Sure, we see tax men steal 60% of the farmers gains. But those taxmen are still civilians, and those farmers still got gains! We see the balance of power shifting as the farming class shares knowledge. Once they have freedom of movement on MARI roads to choose lands, and every town has a Nara Future Foundation trained scribe...
This update has me all Fires of Youth'd up. I'm pumped and I'm gonna be 10% more annoying at my next local council meeting about how installing more bike racks at the library damages neighborhood character.
This update has me all Fires of Youth'd up. I'm pumped and I'm gonna be 10% more annoying at my next local council meeting about how installing more bike racks at the library damages neighborhood character.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- a
Wow you sure have been pinging the qm a lot on that matter huh.
I honestly thinks it's too low-level for us to deal with, especially with the Nara future foundation and all
- Location
- United States
Hey! I waited two weeks since my last ping.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This was the actual reason the Akane seal bank was created (sorry genin but you are only secondary importance)
- Location
- The Void
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's targeting the wrong graft. The Daimyos are the one's taking most of the extra Ryo
- Pronouns
- They/He
It's a really close second though! It's what Akane would have genuinely wanted!
Interesting that farmers pay in ryo instead of crops. Also shows that they have access to markets.
I wonder how many crops the farmers hide from the tax collectors to reduce their after subsidence tax estimate. There being a usual suggests the tax rate is fairly stable. Making it easier to hide surplus crops from a good harvest. Would they lower taxes if the farmers claim a bad harvest.
Well at least the villages where ninja put up walls. We should have the ninja directly tell the villagers they have a lowered tax rate.
edit:
Well directly educating the villagers could work, if you ignore the huge logistical costs. They can just refuse the tax collectors false rates, which indirectly prevents the Daimyo from getting the money. The Daimyo could hire bandits to take their taxes anyway, but they no longer have their biggest crutch (ninja military support). I don't expect the Daimyo to have a large enough standing army to defeat a village. Although if they can hire missing-nin from the Yakuza that's another story. There wouldn't be enough missing-nin to attack every village, but just do it to one and the stories might spread fear in the rest.
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