- Location
- U.S.
... Fuck it, lets go for it. Put this in a plan and I'll vote for it. I'm all-in for Winning This the Hazo Way.
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
... Fuck it, lets go for it. Put this in a plan and I'll vote for it. I'm all-in for Winning This the Hazo Way.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
This is troublesome from my perspective as well, because in the world where we decline (and don't promptly kill Akatsuki) then we only win the necromancy war if we single-mindedly pursue it and get lucky. There's miniscule room for error and less and less of it the more we're forced to direct our time and attention elsewhere.
If we do dedicate ourselves to necromancy 100%, my previous estimate is that we could succeed with somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 likelihood, but also possibly with the risk of Leaf being destroyed if the Akatsuki aren't swayed by the game theoretic moves we'd need to make to avoid getting threatened into giving up our victory. Put simply, the odds of actually winning skew towards the low end of that probability range, and it gets even worse if we get distracted again even once.
In terms of world-state outcomes, joining Akatsuki isn't incredibly different from losing the necromancy race (unless Pein both is planning a grand ritual and can be talked out of it by Hazou, which is plausible to me but the constraint places it in a limited subset of the probability mass) but the odds of us getting Akane and Jiraiya back are much higher. If we try the necromancy race and lose, they only come back if Akatsuki goes open-borders on the afterlife (and even then Jiraiya may not be allowed to come back), but if we're part of Akatsuki's necromancy team then (in my estimation) we're likely to "get a vote" on who else to bring back, and we can choose our family.
In other words, I'm increasingly of the opinion that the route with the best shot at saving Akane and Jiraiya is joining. The sticking point is the Dragonwar, because we can't afford to abandon that, even if it costs us. If Itachi can manage those issues and allow us to continue safely working on the Dragonwar, I think I'd want to join. If he can't, then there's no choice but to stay.
(Incidentally, I think he expects to fake our death if we agree. The way he brought up "Goketsu Hazou must d-" in the negotiation only to not circle back to it and then, after getting alone with us, making an offer like this? It feels like he was setting up a fait accompli if he needed to bring this to the rest of Leaf: "of course Hazou 'died', I tried to tell you guys earlier that it was already decided". Goketsu Hazou is officially dead with the perfect alibi to join the Akatsuki. Meanwhile, if we decline he can just pretend he never said anything, or got talked out of it at some point, and leave us be. I don't really see a reason for him to do the opposite: earnestly promise our death and then pretend to offer us recruitment instead. Anyhow, if this is true then his plan would genuinely need adjustment to keep our Dragonwar plans stable, and my decision would come down to whether he can produce a good enough offer)
- Location
- Pacific standard
This is very in line with my own thinking, behind the memes and poor formatting (er, mine). Our chance to change things is in the thick of it, with the explicit support of the sane parts of akatsuki. I see exactly one way to get into that position - abandoning the premise of working against akatsuki, and just solving the remaining problems instead.
The reason we had this huge necromancy plan is because we didn't know how to get to the point of cooperation with akatsuki, essentially. Most of those hurdles have been cleared for us here, and we need to take a few more out of the way. Namely, we need to be able to agree on an end state now to avoid resource loss to paranoia. Every day that goes by is more people slipping into oblivion, after all.
Seriously we have Itachi in front of us demanding our help opening the portal to the afterlife. Let's make it obvious we agree with the plan, get the important details fixed, then get to work
This game-plan has my tentative support, not accounting for future discussion. I like the vibes, and think it has a decent chance of success.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Mm, I think "single-mindedly race them" vs. "single-mindedly plot their deaths" is worth discussing a bit.
My preference for the latter is based on my perception that our success on the former route seems largely outside our (the players') control.
Consider: If we're planning war or assassinations, there's plenty of tools available to us:
- Our knowledge of physics to test out the viability of various seal-based superweapons, until hopefully hitting upon one that Sealing allows to invent.
- Figuring out clever and fresh ways to bargain with essies (such as Clan Bosses) for whatever shinies their have.
- Cleverly optimizing tactics or strategy regarding the deployment of the tools we already have (primarily Naruto, Tsunade, maybe Oro).
- Coming up with 4D-chess geopolitical moves to distract/corner the Akatsuki/provoke someone else into attacking them.
- Etc.
In comparison, the success on "race them" seems to almost entirely rely on opaque-to-us Sealing mechanics, and the space of useful seal effects is dramatically smaller:
- IC, Hazou would be pretty much limited to just "seals that open the rift" and "seals that move the rift".
- OOC, we'd be able to offer no help besides babbling things like "investigate the viability of seals that... move the rift", "... copy the rift's opening", "... drag the space around the rift where we want", etc., with no underlying model to speak of and no reason to believe a specific rephrashing of the idea would work.
Summarizing, it seems to me that the space of winning strategies regarding "kill the Akatsuki" is much larger than the one for "outrace the Akatsuki", and that we'd be able to search it much more efficiently. Thus, it seems like the better approach.
But you seem to judge outracing them the more viable strategy. Why so?
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- Location
- Fifth Dimension
A problem with this is that if it's deliberate, QMs are less likely to allow it. EM Nuke was something accidental that was caught IIRC. If we make a super nuke sealing-based weapon, and are upfront about it (as we should be), TN is likely to be very high.
Think joining Akatsuki would be fun. Or killing them, join or no. Only downside is less Noburi. 
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The part of your breakdown that I most agree with is our ability to create Akatsuki-killing weapons with a little elbow grease and maybe some irl science. Having the physical means to kill an Akatsuki doesn't sound all that hard (in fact, we've already got one in skyslicers!)
Zoom out a bit and you've got the question of "okay but what sealtech do we need to bring weapon to target effectively?" and that also seems pretty plausible... at first.
The biggest sticking point to me is that the Akatsuki are competent foes. It's already going to be a miracle if they aren't increasing their paranoia now that Kakuzu's been killed: it's going to be so much worse if they figure that they're being hunted. From a near-miss, from a hit (and subsequent conspicuous absence), any route where the Akatsuki consider "Hazou is hunting us" a plausible scenario leads nigh-invariably to them knocking on our door, finding the truth, and killing us.
So our only options are to either kill them all faster than they can react, or manage to successfully spin each death in different directions such that they never direct their paranoia at Hazou. The former sounds very difficult when they don't tend to clump together: I don't even know if they go to AMITY as a group, or even stay in Rain as a group. Itachi and Hidan spent months chilling at O'Uzu while, presumably, Konan went back to Rain to go run it, I'm genuinely unsure if there's any viable way to get them all into kill range. Simultaneously killing them at various different locations is similarly fraught, because Akatsuki-killing opportunities aren't going to be easy to set up and we'd need to not only know the current locations of all of them at once but be able to set up near-simultaneous assassinations even if the local conditions aren't right for trying. Which isn't to say that it's impossible, but there's a whole lot of blank space that needs to be filled in before it's more than a pipe dream, much more than it would take to simply have the means to kill them.
Directing their attention in other directions feels, well, it feels very hard in a way that isn't very conducive to sealing solutions. My priors say that each death would raise their odds of "Hazou is superweaponing us" even in absence of any other evidence, and it would take very compelling evidence that someone else is at fault for that prior to not grow substantially. I don't think we have much wiggle room here: Itachi's already identified us as a twice-offender due to our tech at both the BotG and the Asuma assassination. All it'd take is an "AMITY investigation" strongarming their way into Leaf for just a few harmless questions (or Hidan tracking us down while we're on mission) and we're sunk. Worse, after each assassination Akatsuki is going to become more and more paranoid, turtle up more and more, and it will become increasingly hard to even land the kill in the first place, let alone compellingly blame it on someone else in a way that bears out in a full investigation and keeps them from thinking Hazou might be behind it.
Put simply, when I think about how we might clear these hurdles and solve these obstacles, I come up blank. Not with far-flung ideas that seem plausible if reality permits them, not with "if only X wasn't a problem", but a vast gulf of empty white space where the bulk of the solution would be, empty. Maybe it can be filled, but when I stare at just how much of this is not only unsolved but lacking even a pencil-sketch of a solution, it feels a pretty thin hope.
Worse, I don't think we'll get the support you're looking for. Tsunade and Naruto just watched Akatsuki take Leaf for everything it had, simply because they had an overwhelming amount of power and were angry. They were angry, furious, and they bit down their objections and complied. Their concerns would be the same as above writ large: if Akatsuki so much as suspects Leaf's involvement in one of the assassinations, there may not be a Leaf left when they're done. In the end, Tsunade gave away the treasures of Leaf and Naruto stood there and watched. That's the kind of people they are: they'll keep Leaf safe, whatever the cost. Crossing Akatsuki is a death knell for Leaf unless they're sure that our plan will work, and I again see only blank white space where our plan would be, where our argument would be. Even a plan that we'd be willing to bet on might not be enough to convince them.
In the end, I can't see this route winning. Like, physically, I'm trying to envision the world where we won and I don't understand how we could have gotten there. I query my mind what kind of seal-tech Hazou must have made to get to this end-state and see empty white outlines, I query my mind to think what kind of plots we cooked up to get the scenario we need and I see blank parchment and people speaking silence. This isn't normal: I'm usually quite capable of filling in the whitespace with a shifting assortment of possibilities, imagining the words we might say and the pathways into the future that spell our success. "We'll figure something out" isn't something I usually bet against but in this case I'm spectacularly at a loss for figuring out what would be sufficient to clear every single one of the hurdles to a degree that won't have us crashing and burning the second something doesn't go exactly according to plan. When it comes right down to it, I can't put my faith in a plan I can't even imagine winning.
Contrast "just bet that you're faster than Sasori", which is just a matter of some known unknowns turning out relatively favourably. And, mind, remember that I'm also not all that confident in this route anymore, because the odds look long and we'd be gambling all of Leaf against Akatsuki's temperament even if we win. But it's at least a route I can imagine winning, something that I can see the path to victory on. I know what I would need to vote for, even though we don't have all the line items specified. I can see what we would need to invent, what plans we would need to make, what we'd need to say and what we'd need to research and what odds we'd have to roll, just like most every other plan I endorse.
Again, it really is quite unusual that I'm so utterly at a loss for what the "????" before the "Profit" might be, but when I tally up all the hurdles we'd need to clear to reach this kind of win, when I aggregate all the different kinds of challenges we'd need to face, with the few resources we'd have until and unless we can convince the rest of Leaf that this is a sure thing, it just seems fundamentally out of reach. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to make a plan in that vein, I would probably aim to simultaneously kill them in scattered groups. If it's that, then we'd "just" need to invent something of comparable destructive capability to Elemental Mastery (such that we can fire-and-forget it into the general vicinity of the essie and they would have no chance of survival) and a way to know all of their locations ahead of time (through ???? means, maaaaaybe political something something but I still don't really think they gather in one place like that these days). But I very much am unable to simply treat this as "we'll figure something out", even with the phenomenal power of lithosealing at our back.
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- Location
- Washington, USA
We already know a simple seal which makes different wavelengths of visible light, or infrared. Hard enough the other way would produce ionizing radiation. Pretty sure that could come in handy somehow for plausibly-deniable murder.
[] Action Plan: Quicksaving…
- Instead of answering, lean forwards and kiss Itachi on the mouth.
- While he's BSODing, steal his wallet.
- Run.
- Get 0.3m before Itachi stabs us in the brainstem, killing us instantly.
- Location
- Italy
I really like this idea, regardless of what we choose
for example, go to the relevant Bosses (Crow,Shark,Dog) + their eventual successor Jounins and make a pact that whoever gets there first(maybe Sasori dies in the dragonwar, or maybe he gets killed by a Sealing failure) will commit to ressurect Nagato and Akane (possibly add Jiraiya too). This way, even if we remain in Leaf, we can be relatively sure of evading the worse outcome, on top of that, this is a good bet even for Itachi, because he adds redundancy, the better part of the plan is that we lose nothing, because we, well, already wanted to ressurect Nagato according to A-day.
Make this as a precondition for everything, and no matter the choice, both us and the Akatsuki win.
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
While I can be persuaded to defect to Akatsuki, I want to reiterate that getting Tsunade's allowance for it is utter nonsense. Whoever thinks that either Tsunade or Naruto would go for it has forgotten that nationalism is a thing that lives in some people's head, including in this setting. Akatsuki just utterly humiliated Leaf. And that after a string of murdering their most beloved leaders several times over not so many years.
Additionally, even if we did somehow manage to convince Tsunade right now, Itachi would not go for it. He specifically stated that we would have to earn Akatsuki's trust. "Joining" Akatsuki with a mission from the Hokage is pretty much making such a trust impossible. We are a skilled sealmaster. All we need is ink and paper and a to become a suicide bomber with a dirty bomb.
We can also say bye bye to the Dogs if we want to keep our family safe and the Conclave functional. It's not possible to keep in contact with the Dogs and active on the Seventh Path while keeping our defection secret from Leaf.
No, to join Akatsuki and not make a massive and disgusting mess out of things we will have to fully break from our family and friends. All of them. We will have to dedicate ourselves to necromancy, to pushing for peace as we understand it, to supporting the Dragonwar from behind the curtain to the best of our ability. But our ability to do these things may well increase instead of decreasing. That's the (IC) appeal of joining Akatsuki, despite the massive sacrifice.
The only way to do it is for Itachi to kidnap us, presumed dead. He leaves the Dog Scroll behind alongside some kind of coded message that only Mari can understand that has the truth buried within it to prevent a Gokētsu rescue mission and another coded message to somehow prevent Kagome from going Armageddon Initiative (though it would be cool if he joined us, if only I had even a slightest inkling of how to finagle that).
Anyway, with that off my chest I want to say that joining Akatsuki is not as terrible as some make it out to be.
Additionally, even if we did somehow manage to convince Tsunade right now, Itachi would not go for it. He specifically stated that we would have to earn Akatsuki's trust. "Joining" Akatsuki with a mission from the Hokage is pretty much making such a trust impossible. We are a skilled sealmaster. All we need is ink and paper and a to become a suicide bomber with a dirty bomb.
We can also say bye bye to the Dogs if we want to keep our family safe and the Conclave functional. It's not possible to keep in contact with the Dogs and active on the Seventh Path while keeping our defection secret from Leaf.
No, to join Akatsuki and not make a massive and disgusting mess out of things we will have to fully break from our family and friends. All of them. We will have to dedicate ourselves to necromancy, to pushing for peace as we understand it, to supporting the Dragonwar from behind the curtain to the best of our ability. But our ability to do these things may well increase instead of decreasing. That's the (IC) appeal of joining Akatsuki, despite the massive sacrifice.
The only way to do it is for Itachi to kidnap us, presumed dead. He leaves the Dog Scroll behind alongside some kind of coded message that only Mari can understand that has the truth buried within it to prevent a Gokētsu rescue mission and another coded message to somehow prevent Kagome from going Armageddon Initiative (though it would be cool if he joined us, if only I had even a slightest inkling of how to finagle that).
Anyway, with that off my chest I want to say that joining Akatsuki is not as terrible as some make it out to be.
- Hazō has high Resolve and high value as a sealmaster. If Sasori is worth anything at all as a person we will earn his respect.
- One cannot safely enslave a sealmaster of Hazō's caliber. They will have to hand us plenty of carrots and not only sticks.
- Kisame getting on board with the Dragonwar could be an ironclad demand of ours.
- Akatsuki has the means to provide a new Summoning Scroll. We can apprentice a promising Rain sealsmith and give it to him, to be our point of influence in the Dragonwar. We can also adopt a permanent alias, just to muddle the waters.
- Akatsuki definitely can help Uplift. I'd be surprised if Konan isn't partially aboard already, what with her nation building endeavor. Itachi is a bleeding heart Nagatoist. And Hidan wants to increase the world population in order to increase the absolute numbers of murders happening.
- If we get to live in mostly one place (like Rain) we will be able to make new friends our age.
The most straight forward way is to create a super cooling seal.
If we can manage this at all then the only target we need is Sasori. If Sasori dies without Hazō (or Leaf in general) seeming like the culprit then we win the race.
Actually, what if we joined Akatsuki and Sasori died in circumstances that couldn't be traced back to us? That would make us the only Sealmaster capable of Project Necromancy as far as Akatsuki is concerned, and thus give us a brickton of leverage, though of course making that happen may not be feasible or worth it, especially in the short term. Plus, if Akatsuki loses even one more member it kinda crumbles as an organization. Still, if Sasori perished in a Sealing failure right on the brink of completing mission afterlife...
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Ngl, this is what I struggle with the Akatsuki Route. It feels like betraying our family. We can't even be sure that Akatsuki will let us bring back Jiraya and Akane.
I think core Team Uplift and Ino must know that we're alive and chose to disappear of our own volition, for emotional and pragmatic purposes both, even if they don't need to know any details, however blurry they may be, because there really isn't much tying say Gouketsu Mari to Leaf, and if she, Noburi, Kei and Kagome believe that we are dead, well, that's the end of the entire Clan and a big unpredictable mess. If they are at least vaguely aware of the situation though, Noburi can simply become the Clan Head and things will stabilize, while we spend what amounts to maybe a year at most in Rain before we no longer have to be secretive about it, as Itachi did mention earning their trust was in the cards.
Kagome is also working on Necromancy seals at the moment, and if we take Itachi up on his offer, we should make that point clear and request that he come with us because there is no real alternative as the man is a babbling buffoon OPSEC-wise, not to mention there is no way to tell him to stop working on it without revealing the truth. He is a capable sealmaster and would be an asset to the effort regardless, even if he is not nearly as good as Hazou or Sasori - plus if he comes to Rain with us we can teach him Shadow Clone - there would be no one around who would mind, and we could just say Asuma agreed to it before he died, if we eventually returned to Leaf in a year from a position of power. Plus having Kagome around would be great to not completely isolate Hazou socially.
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Too many unknown unknowns to pull that off deliberately. One does not become a successful adult researcher without being able to anticipate failures. And not only is a failure far from guaranteed to kill anyone, it also has a high chance of collateral and is sometimes directed towards the one who infused the seal. All in all it is a terrible assassination method.
It's the unlikeliness of doing so if we don't join them that makes me consider it all. Right now I feel like Akatsuki already won and we can do little more than influence the form said victory takes.
The only alternative I can think of is going all in on Orochimaru. Meaning we tell Tsunade and Orochimaru everything about ES, 3D sealing and necromancy and fully collaborate, knowing full well that we are creating a scarier Orochimaru than ever before. Then we hope that 3D sealing is a greater advantage than whatever Sasori can do with access to our previous research.
Why would Ino knowing we left her and betrayed Leaf, just as her mentor died be better for her than thinking we are dead?
As for Mari, she still has Noburi and her power base in Leaf. And Kagome has even more people in Leaf than her that he cares about. I guess Mari, Noburi, Kagome and Yuno could go missing together, but I have a hard time seeing Kei joining them. She has too many ties to the rest of Leaf. Plus Ami.
Hmm. Here's another option. We join Akatsuki and sabotage them, by doing a murder-suicide on Sasori at a pivotal moment, using SIN for instance. We trust that after that, Clan Gokētsu will manage to eventually do necromancy through our legacy of ES and 3D sealing, which we of course have detailed in our last will.
Mari certainly has a power base in Leaf, but I don't think she actually...cares about Leaf in Hazou's absence?
Kagome has people he cares about in Leaf, but he cannot stay and must come with us because he is working on Necromancy - if we leave and are assumed dead he would go on an Akatsuki murder spree in revenge at worst, or continue pursuing the project on his own and need to be put down for his interference at best. There is likely no way to get Kagome to stop researching without telling him the truth, nor is there one to tell him the truth without getting him to Rain alongside us. He would be genuinely helpful in research, too, he is no slouch at Sealing.
Yuno is a Jashinist, now likely out in the open, and that's going to be a huge, huge mess to fix when Noburi, the Clan-Head-to-be, is her husband.
Kei is going to make potentially very bad choices if she doesn't vaguely know what happened to us, and Ami could cause a huge mess too. I can see Team Uplift and Ami leaving Leaf and ending the whole Clan Gouketsu thing, if they are not made aware of our survival.
Ino... letting her think we are dead would be extremely cruel on its own, let alone when we are also hurting so many other people by leaving. Don't get me wrong, personally I want to go to Rain, I really do, but I think we need to take a lot of care to not hurt relationships overmuch as we make our exit, and if we cannot give Team Uplift and our girlfriend the bare minimum amount of closure then we'd have to refuse the offer, for reasons both pragmatic and emotional. Leaving a simple note would make do, like "We (H&K) are both alive. Not betraying Leaf. Akatsuki made an offer we can't refuse. Have to disappear for ~1 year. <Insert stuff only Hazou knows so they know its not a fake>."
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Speaking of Last Will, I'mma just brainstorm/wishlist what I want in it.
I also don't know how we can convince Kagome to come in a way that still allows us to stay after all if we fail and he refuses. And going missing will have repercussions for his relationship with Arachnid.
Lastly, remember who we are trying to convince to allow us to have a relatively comfortable exit with relationships intact. Remember how his own experience of leaving Leaf was.
- Noburi is Clan Head.
- Noburi, Mari and Kagome learn about how we unlocked 3D sealing and how we chose to name the art and the resulting seals.
- Noburi learns any leftover secrets of the Kurosawa bloodline and all the effects that trying to scan the Scroll had on us (SSA and otherwise).
- A short treatise on Dog culture and Cannai.
- Jiraiya style heartfelt letters to Noburi, Kei, Snowflake, Mari, Kagome, Haru, Yuno, Atomu, Honoka, Sasha, Gaku, the other Gokētsu ninja collectively, Gokētsu as a whole (including civilians), Ino, Shikamaru, Cannai, Ami and Naruto.
- Including honest apologies to Haru, Yuno, the other Gokētsu ninja collectively and Naruto.
- Not Shikamaru because the letter would have been written before that fallout.
- Including advice and hopes for the Clan for Noburi and Mari.
- Necromancy remains important. Support Kagome in his endeavors.
- Try to have an Earth Element seal researcher in the family so that he may rediscover 3D sealing. Also Earthshaping can make us filthy rich.
- Hazō's death might be a good time to attempt some form of reconciliation with the Hagoromo.
- Take personal interest in the education of freshly graduate Gokētsu ninja. See if they are good candidates to benefit from all Gokētsu resources (hint hint).
- Continue to subsidize civilian efforts to innovate.
- Uplift forever.
- Including honest apologies to Haru, Yuno, the other Gokētsu ninja collectively and Naruto.
- Logical retroactive time for updating all this would be before+after exploring the sealing failure cave system.
I don't see how Ino can possibly take this as not a betrayal. Ninja are taught to die before capture, due to the sacredness of secrecy and the existence of T&I departments.
I also don't know how we can convince Kagome to come in a way that still allows us to stay after all if we fail and he refuses. And going missing will have repercussions for his relationship with Arachnid.
Lastly, remember who we are trying to convince to allow us to have a relatively comfortable exit with relationships intact. Remember how his own experience of leaving Leaf was.
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- Location
- Land of Snow
Best of all worlds is joining Akatsuki with the blessing of Hokage. It doesn't seem too hard: they have an important project almost guaranteed to succeed and the only way Leaf has an ability to steer that project is to send their own ninja. That's very simple reasoning. Long term we're also better off giving the rift to Akatsuke instead of hogging it to ourselves and then trying to defend it against the whole world. Without the blessing... if we return to Leaf with Jiraya and Asuma, we were totally not a missing nin, but a loyal one that went undercover. But in the meantime it might devastate a lot of people we're important to and damage our clan.
Chances of winning the necromancy race for me seem bleak. Even if we're able to steal the portal, it's not really possible to cheat Akatsuki about it for long. And then they're coming to claim it. If by that time we don't have a friendly Nagato they're demanding we get him or hand them the portal. Then either we still lose necromancy race or go for a hostage situation (with the rift or with Nagato, depending). Nagato is the only reason they need the rift, so as soon as they make sure they're not getting him back, they attack.
I'm also extremely sceptical about the prospect of destroying Akatsuke as a whole. It's a difficult feat even with an intact whole Leaf forces, and we're sure to get drawn into politics if we try to unite them.
Chances of winning the necromancy race for me seem bleak. Even if we're able to steal the portal, it's not really possible to cheat Akatsuki about it for long. And then they're coming to claim it. If by that time we don't have a friendly Nagato they're demanding we get him or hand them the portal. Then either we still lose necromancy race or go for a hostage situation (with the rift or with Nagato, depending). Nagato is the only reason they need the rift, so as soon as they make sure they're not getting him back, they attack.
I'm also extremely sceptical about the prospect of destroying Akatsuke as a whole. It's a difficult feat even with an intact whole Leaf forces, and we're sure to get drawn into politics if we try to unite them.
Ino might see that as a betrayal of sorts, sure, but its still more closure than Hazou disappearing into thin air and being presumed dead. Regular social conventions don't really apply when Essies come knocking and demand things, so even if she feels betrayed, she will understand and won't resent us too much for it. Its certainly easier on her psyche than believing us dead. She lost her father recently, then her mentor yesterday, lets not make her believe her boyfriend is dead too, especially when Itachi hinted he'd have us killed during the meeting.
Kagome won't refuse, he has neither incentive to do so (leaving is the only real option - its the only way he can work on saving Akane and Jiraiya), nor the ability to survive Akatsuki if he were to refuse. Call it Clan Head orders, but really its essie bullshit, and we're making an executive call here.
Oh but we are not asking him to let us say goodbyes, just to grab Kagome, a fellow involved Sealmaster, and to let us leave a quick note to run basic damage control on the turmoil that our disappearance without a word would cause in Leaf, a note which he would know the contents of. All these actions are pragmatic, they just so happen to give our relationships some closure on top of that. And if Itachi disagrees? Well, asking won't hurt.
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Leaf seeing Hazō's disappearance as a betrayal and Gokētsu not believably condemning him for it fucks the whole clan royally. And Ino won't keep it secret from Shikamaru. And Shikamaru will have every reason to suspect that Hazō was involved in Asuma's death after all. At which point Hazō becomes a scary as fuck arch-traitor, meaning that he will weigh informing Tsunade over his sympathies towards the rest of the Gokētsu.
The response I would recommend as a member of Leaf leadership that doesn't actually know the truth would be the dismantling of Gokētsu as a Clan, with Yamanaka digging through their heads in order to facilitate rehabilitation as KEI ninja. Mari will escape the moment she reads our note because she is not stupid. Hopefully she convinces the rest of our not Leaf-born family to do the same, otherwise Kagome will die in a massive conflagration. Noburi could take his chances and live in Leaf as a disgraced yet supremely useful and eventually powerful clanless ninja, though given who his wife is, he may choose to go missing for her sake. Kei will be insulated due to her marriage to Shikamaru, but will suffer both politically and emotionally. All the Leaf-born will have the mixed bag of having temporarily been part of the Gokētsu. They will disavow the Clan to the best of their ability while reaping the benefits of the gifts we left them.
I'd rather see Ino heartbroken.
Note that we'd be leaving that as a message to Team Uplift, presumably read by Mari, who would destroy it and then inform the rest. Its not like we're leaving it on public display and shouting it from the rooftops. Ino would just be told secondhand that Hazou's alive, and only if Mari judges that feasible, no?
Not telling anyone that we are not dead is a can of worms as bad or worse as the one you just outlined above in outcome. Its simply not a realistic option. Meanwhile whatever Ino is told, if anything, would be up to a literal social spec jounin with a preference that she be told in some way that doesn't endanger the clan, but only if there is such a way. So we should be fine for damage control. Also, Leaf can really not afford to squander resources like that in its current diminished state, Goketsu are likely the strongest remaining Leaf Clan right now. Mari and Yuno alone count as two strong jounin in combat (the former a near-essie) and then there is everyone else. Even if Leaf were to learn of it, there is quite a big jump from "Akatsuki kidnapped Goketsu sealmasters after blatantly extorting Leaf for their research while bending the village over their knee" to "Hazou is a traitor". If anything it just paints the image of "Akatsuki is doing huge sealing research".
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
We could have written a heartfelt "brother in law and heart" letter, and included an ending segment of "although I write this here and now, and we are on good terms, I am nevertheless too sensible of my own defects, and suspect that I will have unintentionally offended you since finishing this letter. I will not leverage my death to beg for forgiveness, for that would be unfair to you, and would discount the offense I have no doubt rightfully caused."
And then maybe follow it up with "I will, however unfair it is to do, leverage my death to ask that you look after Kei, and protect her. She will loathe me for asking this of you, and you may take additional offense at the very implication that you wouldn't, but these are my last words, and I intend to Go Pretty Damn Far, even after my death. Look after her, and look after yourself. Don't estrange yourselves from community, and do not harden your hearts against the pain of hard decisions. That way lies the path of Orochimaru."
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I can't believe I'm saying this, but for all that it could well be the rational thing to do, it feels like selling your soul.
Hazou will feel like shit, we'll feel like shit. I couldn't care less about Leaf as village/nation, but I do care about some of its people. I'd rather Nagato came back alive and we somehow manage to get Akane back through a deal, and live under his benevolent tyranny than having to deal with Mari & co thinking we abandoned them or something. They don't deserve that. It's an emotional argument, and it feels wrong, but I somehow still think it matters.
Can we just tell Itachi that we'll work with Akatsuki on the rift, but for the same reason we're researching it - ie. protecting our family - we can't just seclude ourselves in Rain?
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Thanks for a comprehensive breakdown!
A few points I'd like to draw attention to:
- At the EN's technology level, information propagates much slower than ninja run.
- We can repel the Akatsuki's direct attack, as long as their group has been culled sufficiently.
- Culling them sufficiently before they can group up is the problem, one we'd need to spend most of our efforts towards.
The tricky part, the one we'd need to spend 80% of our efforts on, is making sure we can do the culling before they come for us.
One thing that's advantageous here is that, as far as we know, they don't have any instant-communication technology (Kisame - Itachi aside). If a pair has wandered off somewhere, and we hit Rain, it may be days or even weeks (if they're camping out at some area without significant ninja presence, like O'Uzu, so the news travel at civilian speeds) before the others learn of it. So the "simultaneity" in "kill them simultaneously" is measured in ~a week, not, say, hours. Which would give our essies time to rest, for example.
As such, what we'll need to do is manipulate the geopolitics, invent sealing-based tracking/surveillance devices, leverage the spy networks, execute Clever Plans, etc., until there's a moment where, say, two pairs of them are sitting in locations known to us. Once that's achieved, it is essentially the sufficient condition for winning, even at our current combat capabilities. And that seems eminently possible to arrange. (Especially since we already know two locations two groups of them likely visit frequently: Konan + someone in Rain, and Sasori + someone at the rift. It may be as simple as "post scouts near the rift, act the moment Akatsuki are in the area". Note also how O'Uzu is, again, without significant ninja presence, so it'd be ages before either group learns of the other's demise (as long as we control for Summon communications).)
Another variable here is the "sufficiently" in "sufficiently cull them". At present, that means we need to kill off two pairs of them. That'd just leave two members, and those would be outnumbered and slaughtered by our essies even if we're playing defensive and they attack Leaf. (So they plausibly won't even try.)
However, if we're unusually successful in our weapons research, this constraint can weaken. If we become confident of handling four or more members simultaneously, that just means we need to annihilate one pair; and that's achievable with our current intel, just by hitting Rain. And if we're at "the alpha strike can instantly wipe out 3-4 Akatsuki even if they're prepared" (or weaken them enough that non-essies can finish them off, see Kakuzu's death), we can even provoke a direct confrontation with the entirety of unculled Akatsuki. Start combat, use the superweapon at the first turn, have our essies finish off the remnants.
As I'd said, this strategy seems to offer a wide multitude of victory pathways, and most of them look very possible to go down.
Here's a concrete biosealing-based idea:
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