Remove ads

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Reader mode
Trails in the Sky fucking rules. One of my favorite RPGs ever.

Ironically, the Deep Lore in Trails in the Sky is kinda lame. It's the surface lore that's cool- like, how you go into a city and every single NPC (there are hundreds and hundreds) has unique dialogue that updates after EVERY single event in the game, you can go through the game and talk to the same person over the course of the whole game and learn how they've been getting along and how your actions have affected their life, and you can do this for literally every NPC, and there are hundreds of NPCs. It's so much dialogue and so many little micro-stories going on, it is a frankly insane amount of text.

also there's trails in the chest

i would sacrifice my firstborn for the next trails game to have trails in the chest again

trails went wrong when falcom made it impossible for localizers to do chest text
 
In the old Trails games, when you interact a second time with a treasure chest, it says something like "This chest is empty". But for game development reasons, each chest has its own unique string in memory, that all just say the same thing. So the english localization team took the time to write little quips in, since really every chest can have a unique message for when you interact with it the second time. These little asides are usually called 'chest text', and range from simple quips about the situation - "You're supposed to be a hero, but you're just looting!" to a fully nonlinear story told across dozens of chests throughout multiple games, Trails in the Chest.

Sadly, the more modern games in the series (which spans nearly 2 full decades now) don't have the silly memory situation, and thus have no chest text.
 
Remove ads
Chapter 619, Part 8: Roosting Chickens
  • Threadmarks

    • Mari waited three breaths after Kei was out the door, just long enough to be sure her adoptive daughter wouldn't come back, and then immediately turned to the next problem: making sure Hazō didn't make things even worse while she got Kagome corralled.

    "Right," she said, turning to her Clan Lord who was also her doofus of an adoptive son. "So. Time to plan damage control. Obviously, I take the blame on this with Kagome. I'll go do a wounded-bird on him about how guilty I feel for manipulating y..."

    Wait.

    Wait, no. Nonono. This was exactly what she had been working to get away from, exactly who she had been striving not to be.

    How had she...

    "Damnit," she whispered, tapping her fist on her palm as she sank into a chair. "Damnit, damnit, damnit."

    "What? What's wrong?" Hazō asked, moving closer to her.

    "Shitshitshitshit," Mari muttered. "Damnit, in the moment it just seemed so perfect. Getting her on our side is going to be so damn valuable, and I knew I could fix it after the fact, so.... Argh!" She fisted both hands in her hair and tugged angrily. "Damnit, I'm trying not to be this!"

    "Mari, what are you talking about?!" Hazō was crouched in front of her, looking up at her face in concern.

    He didn't see it. Wow. He honestly didn't understand what he had just done. For a moment when he made his play she had thought that it was a masterpiece of improvisational politics in which Hazō had recognized that the swirling vortex of horribleness that was Akatsuki and everything surrounding them was currently the greatest threat to the Gōketsu, that Ami was the person with the most leverage and access on that question, and that he was trying to protect the team by binding Ami to them.

    Then she had woken up and remembered that this was Hazō.

    Unfortunately, she had already been a sentence and a half into her 'nah, you can totally be family' rant and there was nothing left but to continue forward.

    She sighed and let go of her hair, taking Hazō's hands between hers so as to keep him focused, and so that she could monitor his reactions better. This was going to crush him and she needed to be sure it came out as sadness and horror and a desire to improve, not as anger and rebellion. Being able to monitor his skin temperature and muscle actions would be useful, and the skin-to-skin contact would help keep him rooted in the moment.

    "Hazō," she said gently, "how do you think Kagome is going to react when he hears that you made Ami family and gave her our single greatest secret, one that you haven't shared with him yet?"

    "Huh?" Hazō said. "He'll...oh." He went still, remembering the conversation in which Kagome-sensei had laid out his feelings about Ami. "He won't like that, will he?" The words sounded sick, and the words and tone together were a relief; he recognized the problem and was reacting the right way.

    "'Won't like it' is one way to say it, yes," Mari agreed, amusement on her lips. "It's along the lines of 'Yagura was peeved at traitors', but it's a way to say it. Unless we handle this very, very well and right now, you have permanently destroyed your relationship with Kagome."

    He sat back on his heels and she let his hands slide through hers without opposition. Good; his expression was definitely more 'hollowed out' than 'irritated by a petty distraction'.

    She shook her head in self-directed annoyance. "When you made her that offer, I screwed up. I thought—just for a moment—I thought like the Heartbreaker again. Politically, welding Ami to the Gōketsu is a brilliant move and I followed your lead and made it happen. I knew that I could manipulate Kagome into accepting it. He would have been furious and it would have taken some time for him to get over it, but he would have if I played wounded-bird and took the blame, apologized to him for manipulating you into doing it and begged his forgiveness. Even if he hadn't, I judged it worth the cost." She gave a frustrated snort. "If I had just kept my damn mouth shut this would be so much easier. Ami would have refused if I hadn't jolted her past her defense mechanisms by telling her she's not the prettiest princess of drama. Her having refused us would reduce Kagome's stress levels about her influence on you and given him a shot of 'I told you' that would have helped offset the anger and hurt. Plus, there would have been time to manage it. Kei wouldn't have said anything and Ami probably wouldn't have said anything soon. Sure, it would have given her a huge weapon against the family but we would have had time to defuse it. Right now we don't. We aren't in control of the schedule and we have to do damage control immediately. Like, right now. Planning for the Tsunade meeting is now on the back burner until we prevent this from blowing everything up. Noburi and Yuno are going to be at least a little annoyed that you didn't get their input, although they have a much better relationship with Ami so it won't bother them that much."

    "Oh." He digested that, then looked up hopefully. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

    "Well, I'm not willing to do the full bag on him," she said, grimacing. "I promised myself I would start being honest with family as much as possible, and with other people where convenient. Yes, I have some thoughts but I'm going to hold them back until after you talk. You made this mess, Clan Lord. How are you going to clean it up?"

    o-o-o-o​

    "What's going on?" Kagome asked, his voice distracted because he was busy minutely inspecting his chair. The inspection was visual, tactile, and by way of a chakrascope seal. Only when he was satisfied did he stand the chair up again and settle into it, eyes moving from Hazō to Mari.

    "Got a few things to go over with you," Hazō said. "The first one is really cool and I've got a bet on with Mari that you're going to gape in shock when you hear it."

    "Hey!" Mari said, leaning over so she could thwap Hazō on the arm. "You can't tell him! That's cheating."

    Hazō grinned. "Ninja."

    Kagome looked back and forth between them. "How much is the bet?"

    "Uh...a hundred ryō?"

    "At four to one odds," Mari said, sounding smug. "If I win, he owes me four hundred ryō."

    "Hm," Kagome said, thinking. "So I get to choose which of you wins?"

    Hazō blinked. "Uh..."

    Kagome turned to Mari. "How much of it will you give me to not gape?"

    "Hang on now," Mari said quickly. "This isn't how betting works."

    "It doesn't?" He thought about that. "Pretty sure it does. If I gape, you owe Hazō a hundred ryō. If I don't, he owes you four hundred. Pretty sure I can choose whether or not to gape, so..." He shrugged helplessly.

    "Sensei, what do you care?" Hazō asked, a whiny tone drifting into his voice. "You've got unrestricted access to the clan treasury. Heck, if you want four hundred ryō you can take it out of the petty cash drawer."

    "Sure, but this would be way more fun."

    Mari looked to Hazō. "Call it a push?"

    Hazō nodded, the little stinker. Cheating his teacher out of properly-earned money like that!

    Kagome crossed his arms angrily and glowered at his clan members. "Fine. What's your oh-so-amazing news?"

    "That three-dimensional seal stuff I told you about before? I cracked it. I know how to infuse them. This time for real. I haven't done one because I wanted you to be there with me, but I've got the math to prove it."

    Kagome blinked. "That was fast."

    Actually, 'fast' was both right and wrong. Hazō had made his breakthrough a month ago and been confident at the time that he knew how to do an infusion. Once the two of them had sat down and gone through all the various auspices and effects that Hazō had recorded at the time, they had discovered that the infusion would absolutely have failed. They had been working furiously ever since to decouple some of the more volatile influences from the infusion process, and they had cracked everything but the issue of sound. That was one of the key parts in any infusion, whether or seals or runes: ensuring that you had figured out how to make the infusion not be affected by ambient sound. There were simply too many things that made sound, too many intensities and pitches, for it to be remotely safe. If Hazō had cracked that last vulnerability then yes, it really should be safe. Which was both fast (it had only taken a month) and slow (Hazō had managed to restrain himself for an entire month before doing the infusion).

    "I know, right?" Hazō said, grinning like a loon. "We need to do this soon. I'm figuring we pick something easy, figure out the blank and the infusion, and pop it out in the next few days? The chime seal might be a good thing to adapt—it's got that skew turn two-thirds of the way along the primary channel, but other than that—"

    "The chime seal is a terrible idea!" Kagome snapped. "Terrible! In three dimensions that skew turn would probably generate frame dragging along the channel, and that would lead to—"

    "Gentlemen," Mari said, raising one hand slightly with a smile. "Maybe you could keep the shoptalk for later? We've got a bunch more stuff to go through."

    "But—!" / "But we..."

    Mari gave both of them a speaking look and they deflated.

    "Fine," Hazō mumbled.

    "What's the next thing?" Kagome demanded, hoping they could get through it quickly so that he could bonk some sense into Hazō. Honestly, he was going to create his first rune and he wasn't going to make an explosive? Kagome despaired. Clearly, he had failed as a teacher.

    "Kagome, you know that I'm I&S," Mari said. "I don't think we've ever talked about what that means."

    Kagome blushed, hoping this wasn't going where he thought it was going. He really did not want to hear the details of what Mari did on her missions. (Okay, maybe he did a little.) He definitely did not.

    "More importantly," Mari continued, ignoring his reddening face, "I don't think I've ever told you what you and the rest of the family mean to me." She chewed her lips, eyes drifting towards the fire and distant memories. "My uncle...did things to me, as a child—don't worry, he died. A long time ago, and I'm over him. I was always tiny, and weak. I tried to be a taijutsu specialist so that I could ensure that no one could ever do that to me again, but there's only so much you can do when you're built like I am."

    "But you were a champion!"

    "Sure," she said, smiling widely at him. "Because I cheated like crazy. I spiked my opponents' water bottles before matches, I threw itching powder in their faces, I used genjutsu. Most of the guys I was fighting were a foot taller and fifty or a hundred pounds heavier. Chakra covers a multitude of sins when it comes to taijutsu, but there are still limits, and they could push just as much chakra as I could.

    "I was never very good at making friends. I was little and I didn't trust very well and I had a huge chip on my shoulder. Once I hit puberty and started filling out, I got all kinds of attention that I didn't want. I freaked out several times. One guy slapped my ass and said something crude which happened to echo something my uncle used to say. Without even thinking about it, I kneed him in the balls so hard I broke his pelvis. Someone else crowded me up against a wall and put his hands on my arms, tried to kiss me. I attacked him and lost, badly. I was in the hospital for a week and on crutches for two more. Word went around that I was 'a crazy bitch'—which, in fairness, I kind of was at the time—and no one wanted to work with me. Getting pulled over to the I&S side probably saved my life.

    "Pretty much everyone in I&S has a similar background, at least in the broad strokes. I'm sure there are well-adjusted people from good homes who end up over there, but it's certainly not the majority. Doing an infiltration mission is all about lying to people, making them trust you, then betraying them. People with happy childhoods don't tend to be good at that. Seduction is that but more; you have to convince yourself that you care about your target or you can't be effective. And, once you've convinced yourself of that, you need to stab your target in the back, literally or figuratively.

    "Then there's the training itself. We were taught body-reading techniques—not ninjutsu, per se, nothing like that. Just ways of focusing and moving, modeling and projecting your own emotions, or emotions you want to be seen to have..." She frowned, trying to find the words and then deciding it didn't matter. "These techniques can't be turned off. I know when people are lying to me, even if they're trying to be nice."

    She laughed. "This probably won't mean much to you, Kagome. You're too honest. Still, think about how many white lies people tell in a day. 'Why yes, this soup that you made for me is delicious.' 'No, that dress absolutely does not make you look fat.' 'Yes, I would love to listen to you right now instead of going to my bedroom and lying down.' 'No, I was not offended by that thing you said.'" She smiled, a little bit sadly. "Most of them aren't lies per se. They are expressions of care and affection, because people mostly only say those things for people they care about. They are shields around the heart of the person you want to protect. I know when people are lying to me, and so I don't get to have those shields.

    "Then there's the nastier side of the training. We're taught to notice and identify the psychological weaknesses of everyone around us. It's also not something I can turn off, and it makes it hard to form close bonds.

    "Our original group—you, Hazō, Akane, Kei, and Noburi. Team Uplift. You were the first people in my entire life who trusted me as a person, believed in me as more than a weapon. I can't tell you how much that meant to me." She looked down and swallowed before forcing herself to raise her head and meet his gaze again. "I was headed down a very bad road, my friend. I honestly don't think I would have survived another three years if we hadn't all formed the family bonds we did, and you are a key component of our family. It wouldn't be the same without you and I don't know that any of us would have survived without you as part of the mix. Sage knows that the wilderness could easily have killed us without your expertise."

    Kagome squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. She saw his discomfort and smiled slightly, looking away so as to reduce the painful intimacy of the moment.

    "It's like that for all I&S ninja," Mari said, looking at the fire again. "I worked with four or five back in Mist, and I've had glancing friendships with a few more here in Leaf. We're all pretty fucked up. We all have shitty defense mechanisms that we fall back on way too easily in order to push people away. We all do crappy stuff to make ourselves feel less hollow, less afraid. We all have huge trust issues and massive trouble making friends. The closest we get to having friends is others of our own kind, and even there it's more like dogs circling each other than real friendship."

    Kagome frowned as a thought occurred: this was not a spontaneous sharing of feelings. There was a goal to this conversation.

    "Why are you telling me this?"

    "Because something happened with Ami," Hazō said. "I did something complicated and impulsive and you're going to absolutely hate it without extensive context."

    Kagome's blood froze and he clenched tight to the arms of his chair so that he didn't do anything dramatic with his hands.

    "I trained Ami," Mari said. "A little. I certainly wasn't her official sensei, I didn't work with her more than a bit on a few occasions, but I knew her and gave her tips. Part of what she is, I made her that."

    "No you didn't! You're a good person and you're not responsible for her meanness!"

    "I'm afraid I am," she said, the smile sad again. "Oh, not all of it. I gave her some techniques for body reading and for emotional projection. I saw just how badly fucked up she was and I did nothing to fix it. I could have. I could have taken her as a student, used my training to help her see all her own bullshit and get past it." She shrugged. "I didn't. I wasn't past my own bullshit at that point.

    "The point is, when I look at Ami, I see myself from a few years before I met all of you. Before you helped me heal. The difference is that Ami has put herself into a position of political power that I never managed. She's an amazing asset as an ally and a very bad problem as a foe. Hazō did something which, from a pragmatic point of view, is going to make this clan a lot safer by bringing Ami more into the 'ally' category." She shot a rueful smile over at Kagome's idiot moron jerkface thoughtless leap-and-don't-bother-looking-ever stinky dumbbutt of an apprentice. "Granted, I doubt that's why he did it."

    Kagome's eyes tracked over to Hazō.

    Hazō raised his hands in surrender. "Sensei, I remember what you told me about her. About how she doesn't care about anyone except herself and Kei. I remember, and I understand."

    "What did you do, Hazō." The words were coming from far away.

    "I...invited her to be family."

    "What."

    "I invited her to be family." He grimaced. "I don't actually know what that means. I didn't invite her to move in, we didn't talk about adoption. That was the extent of it. Just the invitation. And I revealed our training technique. Or, at least, I told her that I would. We didn't actually get to that part before she left."

    "Kagome," Mari said, leaning closer so she could put a hand on his knee. He jerked at the contact; had she said his name before and he missed it?

    "Kagome," Mari said again, the warmth of her tiny hand palpable through the fabric of his pants. "This is partially my fault. Hazō made the invitation, but I made Ami accept it. I'm sorry. I know how you feel about her and I should have taken that into account. Just...for a moment I went back to being who I used to be. I was only considering the pragmatics. Ami is a dangerous person, and the best way to control her is to make her have positive feelings for us."

    Kagome thought about that.

    "Sensei?" Hazō asked tentatively. "May I explain?"

    Kagome jerked his chin in assent, currently unable to figure out how words worked. Mori was going to be around more and more. She was going to get her hooks into Hazō deeper and deeper. She would split the family apart, notice every argument and every tiny crack in the foundations of their love for one another and slide into it like water into a crevice. Water that freezes and thaws, tiny pressure that builds up and up until everything breaks and falls apart. She wasn't going to kill his family. No, that wasn't the style that her type brought to the table. She was going to destroy them. Unmake the Gōketsu and everything that made them who they were, just so that she could put herself into the center and make everyone dependent on her, make them all think she was so clever and perfect. It wasn't too surprising that she had spun Hazō around. Hazō was a teenage boy. Apparently Mari had gotten on the Mori wagon as well and was clearing the ground ahead of her.

    "Let me start with the pure pragmatics," Hazō said. "This wasn't what motivated my action, but it's important to consider.

    "Ami has all the issues that Mari just described. Trouble trusting, trouble making connections. She's been viewing the Gōketsu, and me, as a way of addressing this. That's...not such a bad thing, really? It shows that she's aware of her problems and is trying to fix them. Still, positive desire or not, that behavior is an exploitable vulnerability. It biases her to our advantage.

    "She has always viewed relationships and favors as transactional. I made this offer, and promised her our training technique, without asking for anything in return or setting any conditions on it. That's a massive show of trust that I justified by accepting that she is Kei's sister and therefore part of our extended family, and then explicitly telling her that she is part of the family, or at least is welcome to be.

    "She has been trying to get closer with us for a while—"

    "So she can use us," Kagome snapped. "That's all her kind does."

    "Kagome," Mari said. "I am 'her kind'. Or, at least, I was. Still am a little bit, but I'm trying to channel it in better ways. Do you think everything I do is aimed at using you?"

    Darn it, Mari. This was exactly the sort of thing he hated about infiltrators; they could convince you of anything. Whatever you said, they could turn it back on you, make you the bad guy. You went in angry, knowing that you had been wronged, and ended up feeling like you needed to apologize.

    "No," he sulked. "And you're not like her. You're a good person. You care about us and you try to keep us all together, not split us apart. Not use us, put us down, just to make yourself look better."

    She smiled, but it was a complicated smile. "Thank you. I really don't think I'm a good person, but you're right that I try to use my training for the benefit of the family. The problem is that my training is problematic. I'm trying to use an assassin's dagger to perform life-saving surgery. Yes, it can do the job, but it's not made for the task. Here's an example: the way you looked at me just now, the way you said 'no', makes me think that you're angry and you feel like I'm manipulating you. Is that right or am I misreading?"

    Kagome opened his mouth, and then closed it again and said nothing.

    She nodded. "This is what I was talking about. I often wish that I didn't see things like this. On the one hand, it means that I can raise the issue and try to clear it up before it festers. On the other hand, I'm sure that it feels invasive. The fact that I'm choosing to raise it has taken away some of your agency. Maybe you would have preferred to leave it alone for now, process it on your own time and come back to me about it later, and I've taken that choice from you.

    "Ami is dealing with the same things I am, but she lacks the close bonds that help me channel my abilities in a positive direction. She's also younger than me and has all the problems that come with it. She's young, attractive, and she's been playing against people below her level until very recently. It gives her a degree of arrogance and self-importance that mixes badly with someone screwed up enough to be on the I&S track." Her full lips twitched in what might have been amusement, or maybe something else? "She'll get over it. She would have anyway, but now she's out of the harbor and into the deep. She'll learn her limits soon enough. When she does, she's going to be flailing around, looking for safety. If she has a place to retreat to, connections to rely on, she'll be turning all her efforts to securing that place of safety."

    "That's part of the pragmatic part that I was talking about," Hazō said. "Like Mari said, Ami is at a tipping point and this was our chance to bind her to us. Securing her loyalty was crucial. The Akatsuki situation is bad, and her position within AMITY means that she's going to have a lot of leverage on it. Her cooperation gives us many more options. Having her tied to the family—having her as part of the family—makes us all safer and more powerful. And yes, I am fully aware of all the problems she brings with her. I'm going to keep an eye on her and so is Mari. I will not reveal any of your secrets to her without your permission. Or any other family member's secrets, for that matter."

    "No," Kagome said with a snort. "You'll just reveal all the family's secrets. You said you told her—were going to tell her—about Shadow Clone training. Not just the fact that it's a thing, but whatever trick you figured out that makes it so much more effective than what everyone else is doing with it."

    "Yes," Hazō said. "I did. And I stand by that decision. I meant it when I invited her to the family, Sensei. Part of being in the family is being let in on the secrets. The only reason that I haven't revealed it to you is because you don't have Shadow Clone. I've been trying to get it for you and I'm going to raise the issue again when I talk to Tsunade in the morning. The minute I get it for you, I'll read you in and expect you to get started training. Until then, Leaf's rules about INFOSEC on Shadow Clone are in place and I can't share the details."

    Kagome grumbled at that, but it was fair.

    "And of course she has Shadow Clone," he grumbled aloud. "The greatest secret of Leaf and it's handed to her five minutes after she walks in the gates."

    "In fairness," Hazō said with a chuckle, "it was handed to us a few minutes after we walked in the gates."

    "We earned it," Kagome said, voice sour. "We made huge contributions to Leaf."

    "She created AMITY and ended the war."

    "Hrmph."

    "Anyway," Hazō said, clearly recognizing that it would be better to move on. "I think that the risk/reward balance of making her family is worth it. Mari?"

    The redhead nodded. "I agree. She really will be an asset, Kagome. Besides, so far it's just words. Nothing about our relationship has actually changed yet."

    "'Just words'," Kagome said, unable to keep from sneering despite trying at least a little bit. "Sure. It's always 'just words'." He shifted his voice up into a mocking falsetto. "'Oh, Headmaster, I'm totally sure that this project is safe and absolutely won't turn every speck of dust in the research area into a crab monster that wants to eat our eyeballs!' It's just words until they convince someone to do something stupid, which is exactly what you already did!" He jabbed a finger at Hazō. "I told you she was a psycho manipulator who doesn't care about you, and you went and made her family! My family!" He needed to cling to that point. That was the key point, no matter how much Mari and Hazō tried to plaster over the problem with honeyed words. They were wrong and he was right. Definitely. Yes.

    "Yes, Sensei," Hazō said, his tone firming up. "I made her my family, and your family, and our family. That's what I do, what we all do. When this family started, we were a fucked-up jōnin I&S ninja and three scared and underperforming kids. We got closer and forged friendships that deepened over time. Then we met a brilliant but lonely hermit and, well"—he laughed—"basically kidnapped him and made him be our uncle whether he liked it or not. Same with a certain bonkers, bouncy, overenthusiastic exiled underperforming genin; we basically abducted her into being our sister. We supported one another and loved one another and we all blossomed for it. Can you honestly tell me that your life would have been better if we hadn't dragged you out of your nice safe woods and into Team Uplift? And then into Clan Gōketsu?"

    Kagome glared grumpily at his student and petulantly refused to admit that yes, all of that was completely correct. It was, but he didn't have to say it out loud. Besides, it wasn't even the important part.

    "Her values are Uplift-adjacent," Hazō continued. "She clearly loves Kei. When she had the problem with Mari it wasn't that she was being a power-hungry psychopath, or an evil manipulator—"

    "Manipulatrix," Mari corrected. "Women are -trixes."

    Hazō blinked, thoughts clearly unpathed by the comment. "What? No they're not. 'Sailor' doesn't become 'sailtrix'. 'Tailor', 'ditch digger', 'heroic', basically nothing gets gendered."

    She shrugged, hair swaying in the firelight. "What can I say? I don't make the rules."

    "That's a stupid rule!" Hazō protested.

    "Back to the point, please," Kagome said, using the tart voice that he used when his apprentice decided to wander off onto some thought spiral of trivia instead of staying on the lesson. There was only one thing that needed to be nailed down before he could finally escape this conversation and figure out what his new life would look like. He just needed to make certain that the crazy lady's risk was as mitigated as possible since he likely wouldn't have many chances to talk to Hazō in the future. "You're saying that she's actually a good person and safe to have around. Or that she will be as soon as we domesticate her."

    "'Domesticate' seems harsh," Mari said. "Unless you're willing to apply it to all of us. Hazō needed a lot of help to get past his social clumsiness. Kei needed a lot of help to get past her self-hatred. I needed it to get past..." She smiled ruefully. "Well, a lot of things. You needed it to get past your jumpiness and hair-trigger nerves. Were we all 'domesticated', or were we 'healed'? Because Ami needs the same things we needed." She spread her hands. "She's just like us, Kagome. She's got issues that are different from yours and Hazō's and Kei's, and a lot of them are similar to mine, but she needs the same things we all needed. A sense of connection, of having a safe place to retreat to and a team that we could rely on to have our backs. Of not being alone against the world. Give her those things and she'll have your back the same way the rest of the family does. She'll turn all that energy and craft against the rest of the world. Strengthen the metaphorical gates and crush anyone who remotely thinks to endanger us. She won't hurt us."

    "She won't hurt me," Kagome muttered. "Not more than once, anyway. Not so sure about the rest of you. Way too willing to forgive her. 'Don't worry Kagome, I know she threatened to kill me and really meant to do it, but we had tea one time and she pinky-promised not to so I'm sure everything is fine!'" He snorted. "'Don't worry Kagome, she made fun of me and humiliated me and maybe poisoned me and made Kei want to kill me, but she hasn't done that in a few days so I'm sure everything is fine!'" He glared at both of them indiscriminately. "Well it's not fine! It's not fine at all and she's going to blow up the family the minute whatever brain worm she's carrying starts feeling like that would be fun. She won't even bother to use explosives like a decent person, she'll do it with words. You'll see." He folded his arms on his chest and told his face to be stone. This conversation sucked and he just wanted it to be over.

    Mari shifted in her seat, her eyes widening slightly. "Kagome?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

    "What?!" he yelped. "Nothing! Why should anything be wrong?" No no no, he did not want to talk about this. There was no point. "Nothing's wrong. I'm not upset—I mean, I am, because you made Ms Mental my family and ignored me, but that's all I'm upset about. Definitely not anything else."

    "Kagome," she said, her voice sharp...and then she shook her head as though angry with herself and her voice softened. "Kagome, I can see that something is bothering you—something more than Ami—but I don't know what it is. You don't have to tell us now if you don't want to, but we can't fix it if we don't know what it is. If you don't want to talk about it right now, that's fine, but will you please come find me once you're ready?"

    He looked away guiltily. He wasn't going to find her because there was nothing to talk about. No one needed to listen to an old man whining. It didn't make anything better and there wasn't anything to do once people grew away from you and moved on. It wasn't like you could simply demand that they be your friend again.

    "It's fine," he said again. "It's not important."

    "I think it probably is," she said after studying him carefully for a moment. "But, okay. I won't push."

    "I will," Hazō said, sounding alarmed. "Sensei, please. I don't know what it is but please don't shut us out."

    Kagome's head was turned away from his apprentice, very deliberately studying the coals in the fireplace. Because of that, he felt comfortable rolling his eyes.

    "It's fine," he mumbled. Drat, his eyes were feeling wet. He wasn't going to wipe them in front of the others.

    He pushed himself up. "You heard what I had to say and you're both super sure that she's not going to try to kill us, or pry the family apart because she's bored, or break up Yuno and Noburi because it's fun and then Noburi will fall in love with her. I think you're wrong but what do I know? I'm going to bed." He turned for the door and jumped when Hazō caught his wrist.

    "'What do I know?'" Hazō repeated. "What do you mean by that?"

    "Hazō," Mari said. "Let him go. He doesn't have to tell us now if he isn't ready."

    Hazō looked up at him, afraid and uncertain. "Sensei—"

    "It's fine!" Kagome snapped, yanking his arm away from his apprentice. "It doesn't matter. You didn't listen last time, you didn't listen this time. There's no point." He shrugged. "Maybe you're right. That whole pitch that you put together was good. Maybe it was true and I'm just wrong. Wouldn't be the first time, which is just one more reason that it's not worth talking about anymore."

    "Sensei, I'm sorry," Hazō said. "I do want to listen, truly. I'm trying to explain what happened and why—"

    Suddenly, Kagome was just tired. "Stop," he said. "Hazō, fine. You've made your points, I've heard them. I've said what I needed to say. We can be done now."

    "But there's clearly something else..."

    "It's fine. Let it go."

    "But—"

    "I said let it go! Why are you always like this?! You didn't want to talk about it when I brought it up, you just brushed it off and forgot about it! You didn't want to talk any time after that. Then you go and make her family and suddenly you want to talk? When the only thing to talk about is how I need to accept this and what do you have to say to make dumb ol' Kagome feel comfortable so he doesn't blow up Ms Crazypants? That's what you want to talk about, right? That's all you want to talk about and it's only after the fact that you want to talk to me about it! I'm just the dumb seal guy, right?!"

    He clapped his teeth together and shook his head like a horse shooing a fly. Stupid! Stupidstupidstupid! All he had to do was keep his teeth closed for another ten steps and he would have been out of the room and gone but no, he had to go and fly off the handle. Damn it, Kagome, why were you always so stupid?!

    "Sensei, that is not true," Hazō said. "You are not dumb."

    "That's not his point, Hazō," Mari said gently. "Kagome, I know I said I wouldn't push, but do you mind if I ask you a question about this?"

    Yes, he minded very much! But...

    The brief spike of anger and energy went out of him and he turned to face her. "Fine. What?"

    "I'm worried that you may be feeling isolated," she said. "Maybe a little unvalued?"

    "Leave it, Mari. There's no point in me whining."

    "Telling the people who love you how you're feeling isn't whining, Kagome," she said. "Letting yourself be vulnerable doesn't mean that you're weak. We love you, we want to help you be happy, and when we have done wrong by you, we want to know so that we can make up for it and not do it again."

    He chuckled, the sound still tired. "'We', Mari?"

    "Sensei?" Hazō began, but Mari talked over him.

    "Yes, Kagome," she said, her voice a bit sharper. "We. You're angry at Hazō because he ignored you and assumed he knew better. Now you're doing the same thing. Instead of telling him how you're feeling, you're simply assuming that you know better than him about when things are beyond saving. He's asking you to tell him what you're feeling and you're ignoring him."

    He studied her for a pair of long breaths, and then he sighed and turned to his student. "Hazō, I told you about Mori, about my feelings towards her, months ago. You didn't say any of this at the time. You didn't come to me at any time since then to talk about how your thinking was changing around her. You could have done all this song and dance about how adopting her would be useful, about how you had identified these vulnerabilities in her psychology. You didn't. No, the time that you finally bring it up is after it's already happened. You aren't asking for my input, you're telling me how it's going to be and expecting me to fall in line. It's not surprising, really. I have nothing left to offer. We live on a huge estate with a huge wall, so you don't need me to secure the perimeter. We have a dozen expert cooks down in the cafeteria, so you don't need me to make dinner. You're the Lord of a clan of hundreds, not the driving force of a missing-nin squad, so you operate at a scale I can't help with. You deal with politics and money most of the time, where I'm useless. On that side of things, I'm just another clan member you need to make sure is fed. You've passed me by as a sealmaster so you don't need me as your teacher anymore." He laughed, bitter and sharp. "Heck, you've gone and invented this whole new paradigm of sealing. Before I met you I was a talented sealmaster, someone who could teach others, who could perhaps leave a small legacy. Now I see that I'm just another plodder."

    He thought for a moment, then shook the idea away. "Well, I suppose I'll leave a small legacy. I'll be listed in the Gōketsu sealing lineage, in small print one line up from the giant name in gold leaf. And I have my other students, who maybe will accomplish something." His smile twisted. "Although even there I'm failing. There was a time when I thought that maybe I wasn't the brightest or the most creative, but I was the safest. I thought I could leave a name as the only sealmaster who never lost a student. Can't even say that anymore." He tapped a fist on his palm, eyes watering more freely. "Damnit, Yūdai," he whispered.

    There was a rush of feet and suddenly he was sandwiched between Mari and Hazō, both of them hugging him tight. He froze for an instant and then relaxed as his hindbrain caught up to who was touching him. He allowed his arms to encircle them, hold them both close. He inhaled, smelling the scent of Mari's hair rinse and Hazō's very slight teenage-boy funk. His eyes drifted closed and for a moment he let himself drift back to better times, times before Leaf when it was just them in the woods. When he was useful.

    He squeezed extra tight for a moment and disentangled himself. He gave them a smile and a nod, and was pleased to note that the smile was even mostly sincere. Sad, but sincere. The anger had burned itself out and left only acceptance, which hurt a lot less.

    "Sensei, you are not useless, and I do still need you as my teacher," Hazō said, the words tumbling out. "I'm sorry. You're right, I should have come to you between then and now, before this happened, but I wasn't planning it or anything. Tonight it just came out. I'm not sure I had even realized how my thinking about her was changing over the last few months until it all came together—"

    "It's all right, Hazō," Kagome said. "I'll see you both tomorrow, but I'm going to bed now. Tomorrow, I look forward to listening to more of this lithosealing stuff. For now, go figure out what you're going to say to the Hokage."

    He slipped away from them and went to his room. He closed the door and shot all the bolts and set all the traps. Anything that would let him leave everything and everyone on the other side of his external walls while he struggled to rebuild the internal ones.

    o-o-o-o​

    "So. Resurrecting my brother and my mentor?"

    Good news / bad news right there. Good news, Tsunade's words were mostly calm. Bad news, Tsunade's words were mostly calm. Also, when he showed up at her door she had simply pointed him to a seat in front of her desk, leaned her chair back to balance on two legs, folded her arms on her chest, and stared at him for a good three seconds before speaking.

    "Yes, ma'am. Confirming: are we under maximum privacy precautions? This conversation is going to have some extremely sensitive data in it."

    She grunted an affirmative and looked impatient.

    "Thank you, ma'am. If I may, I have three topics to go through. The first is the rift itself—the relevant history and the ways in which it enables resurrection of loved ones. The second is my thoughts on the current situation regarding the rift and Akatsuki, offered as input for whatever decisions you need to make. The third is a major secret of the Gōketsu clan with relevance to the topic. Obviously, I cannot impose conditions on sharing it, nor do I wish to, so I ask only that you use discretion if possible."

    One fine-lined blonde eyebrow rose for a moment. "That's quite a thing." She put her feet up on the desk, ankles crossed, and nodded. "Go."

    "Right. Back in April of '69, some of the Gōketsu went on a pilgrimage to the Todoroki Shrine on O'Uzu Island. While there, we unexpectedly ran into Hidan and Uchiha Itachi..."

    He laid it all out, being as concise as possible but holding nothing back. The battle with Daizen. The seal failures that had created the three rifts. Rescuing Daizen from the rift. The chakra drain effect. Showing Itachi and Hidan the rift. The seance in which they had seen Jiraiya. Hazō's high confidence level that the seance was accurate and why he believed that, while acknowledging he might be wrong. (He very carefully did not mention that he had prayed to Jashin as part of the seance!) The follow-up trips to the rift, including the one with Sasuke and Hyūga. Minato's bijū-sealing notes, the booby traps embedded therein, and the poetry that disarmed those traps. The fact that Akatsuki had taken all of that, including the corrected versions of Minato's seal notes. The plan he and Kagome-sensei had made to re-open the rift by using one of Minato's seals and a potentially harmful amount of Naruto's chakra. Their progress on the necessary seals. All of it.

    "That's...quite a story," she said when he finally wound down. She leaned back, looking at the ceiling in thought as she slowly rocked back and forth on the rear legs of the Hokage's chair.

    Hazō carefully did not object to the word 'story'.

    "All right," she said, finally looking back at him. "Assume for the sake of argument that it's all true." She raised a hand in preemptive apology. "Assume that it's all accurate. I don't think you're lying, but it's a pretty big structure built on not a lot. It's clearly what Akatsuki believes so we need to treat it as accurate in order to get in their heads. What next?"

    "Next," Hazō said, "I see three scenarios on where we go from here.

    "Option one: no one manages to figure out a workable method to oppose Akatsuki. They open the rift and recover Pain. We have to assume this option is intolerable; there's no way of knowing what he's capable of or what exactly his agenda will be, but it's definitely not going to be to Leaf's best interests. If nothing else, Akatsuki becomes unstoppable; they can do whatever they want and, if they die, Pain resurrects them with that suicide technique of his and then they go back through the rift and recover him."

    He grimaced. "Grasping at faint hints of silver in the clouds, if another ritual turns out to be impossible, as Itachi and Orochimaru say, it shouldn't be an outright apocalypse. Pain may just freeze the AMITY status-quo."

    Tsunade's face tightened. "Go on," she ground out. The air in the room gained a hint of solidity, the weight of a mountain somewhere just out of sight.

    Damnit, Hazō muttered in the back of his own mind. Mari had warned him not to say anything remotely positive about Akatsuki, so why had he felt the need?

    "Right, yes ma'am. Sorry. Um...oh, right. Second option: we steal the rift and replace it. Move the rift scar somewhere else, move a different scar into position where the first one was. There are two other scars onsite, plus I know of another one up in Iron." No need to dwell on the details of that debacle.

    "Move it?" Tsunade asked, sudden interest making her forget her anger. "Is that possible?"

    Hazō wobbled his hand. "Better to say that we don't know it to be impossible. Remember, ma'am, this is all new ground. We're learning a lot every day but there's vastly more unknowns than knowns at this point."

    She grunted acknowledgement and gave him a chin thrust of 'go on'.

    "Third option, ma'am, and definitely the most fraught."

    "This'll be good," she muttered to herself.

    Hazō smiled slightly at the comment, then sobered. "Third option: we kill Akatsuki. Kakuzu's death shows that it's possible, and the fact that Hidan ran instead of fighting says that we could have killed him if we caught him."

    "Slippery little fucker," she said, her face sour and her words more so. "Led us up so far into the sky it was ridiculous, then just switched his 'walkers off and dropped. By the time we managed to get to the ground and find his landing point, he was gone. Bastard didn't switch them on again, he just slammed into the ground. Made a big crater, sprayed blood everywhere, but apparently he just got up and ran off before we could get there."

    "...Wow." Hazō didn't even know what to say to that. Hidan had survived a Rasengan to the chest, survived an explosion that demolished a building, and survived a full-speed drop from miles in the air? Was it possible that he simply could not be killed, period?

    "Okay, that's going to take some thinking," Hazō said after a moment. "First idea is that we run him through a skyslicer, then seal the pieces up in different steel containers, embed each container in concrete, and bury them a mile or so underground in different countries. Probably some issues with that, but with your permission I'll get with Shikamaru and Kei to refine them." He caught himself. "That's assuming you want to entertain the 'kill them' plan."

    Tsunade took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her anger was clear, the sensation of the mountain more solid and closer, but it was clearly mere emotional leakage, not anything weaponized against Hazō.

    "I'd say that's not my call," she said at last. "I'm only keeping this stupid chair warm until you people get off your asses and choose a real Hokage. Until then, don't talk about killing Akatsuki and don't work on it. Leave no evidence of the idea anywhere. I don't want to make a mess for my successor to clean up."

    "Yes, ma'am."

    "There's another option that you didn't mention," she continued. "We close the damn thing."

    "Ma'am?"

    "The rift. We close it. Instead of figuring out how to open it or move it, you destroy it. If they can't bring their precious cult leader back, we've got a much more manageable problem."

    He hesitated. "That... I don't know that to be impossible, ma'am." He thought carefully before continuing. "It seems like an option, but I wish very much that we weren't forced into using it." He caught himself before he could express any feelings about how much he missed Jiraiya, or Akane.

    Unfortunately, she caught the line of thinking.

    "Fuck you and your wishes," she blazed, her feet coming off the desk and chair slamming forward onto all four legs as she leaned onto the desk, the mountain boiling up around her for an instant before she caught control of herself and stuffed her soul back in the bottle. She sat back in the chair but did not lean the chair again.

    "You think I don't want them back?" she demanded, her voice low and buzzing with tension. "Do you think for even a moment that you have the slightest clue how many people I've lost, how deeply I cared for them all, and just how much I appreciate the value to Leaf of recovering Jiraiya, Sensei, and all the others? I shared Jiraiya's life for longer than your mother has been alive. He meant more to me than— I fought beside him and with him, I comforted him through his first heartbreak, he—" She snapped her words off like a rope breaking under load. She had been speaking louder and louder as the words tumbled out and now she stopped herself, breathing slowly and deeply. When she spoke again, her words were calmer.

    "Trust me, boy, when I say I wish we didn't have to use that option," she said. "I would prefer that you had finished your research earlier and we could recover our dead in peace. No, actually, I would prefer that you had not suggested to Asuma that we hire Hidan to hunt down your dead girlfriend—yes, I know about that. I've been reading as many of the recent reports and records as I can manage in order to get a handle on this stupid job."

    She snorted in disgust. "Actually, I would prefer that the little brat hadn't been such a pussy on Nagi. If he had just killed the bitch instead of trying to talk her down, maybe he would have survived until I could get to him and fix that fucking leg. Heck, I would prefer that he fixed that hole in his Sagefucked low guard that he's had since we were genin. Unfortunately, the world loves to shit on what we prefer. So, yes. You'll go back to your little pile of bricks and you'll start working on how to close the fucking rift. If the next Hokage wants you to do something else, more power to 'em. We're done with that issue. What's the last thing?"

    Hazō swallowed nervously. "Yes, ma'am." He took a breath. We are exhaling stress and panic, inhaling calm and relaxation. "The last topic I wanted to cover is the Gōketsu clan secret that I mentioned." He braced himself for the plunge.

    "After studying the Seventh Path's Great Seal and various other sources of esoteric information, I have discovered how to make three-dimensional seals in stone. I call the art 'lithosealing' and I call the product 'runes' in order to distinguish them from the normal two-dimensional seals made with paper."

    Tsunade once more sat forward, but this time in surprise instead of barely-restrained anger. "Say that again."

    "I can make three-dimensional seals."

    "You're kidding me. Jiraiya fucked around with that for decades on and off and got nowhere."

    Hazō raised both hands in a 'what can you do?' gesture. "I've had access to some research and opportunities that he didn't. I can do it." He once more took a breath and let it out slowly. "Now, here's where the conversation gets sticky. Please bear with me.

    "Here's a bit of what I know about lithosealing: runes are by necessity relatively large and heavy. They have far more room for chakra channels, which makes it easier to reproduce a given seal's effect or allows you to get a bigger effect for the same effort. Same effort, more explodey, that kind of thing. They also require a lot longer to make and a lot more chakra to infuse.

    "The sticky part: my information is solid and thoroughly supported but it's still theoretical. I have not done an actual runic infusion yet. As such, I understand if you find yourself dubious. I'm doing the final deskchecking on my first rune now and I'll have proof for you in a week or less. I am so confident in this that I'll bet my position as Clan Head. If I can't infuse a rune or if lithosealing doesn't work out more or less as I expect, I will step down as Clan Head."

    She snorted. "Now that's what I call putting your money where your mouth is. Okay kid, you're on. You've got a week to show me something, but for now I'll take your word for it." She chuckled. "Although, I would completely understand if this is just a fancy way to get out of a job you hate. I'd get it, but it won't play well with the family. 'Oh, so sorry guys, that mean old Tsunade says I have to step down because I lost a bet' isn't going to be the free pass you think it is."

    "Noted, ma'am. No matter what we do going forward—open the rift, move the rift, close the rift, kill Akatsuki—I suspect that lithosealing is going to have an important role. As I mentioned earlier, one of the problems that Kagome-sensei and I were facing was how to put enough power on target to force the rift open using seals. I haven't done the research yet so I can't be sure, but it's possible that the greater capacity of a rune will allow us to do it without needing to endanger Naruto." He quickly raised a cautionary finger. "Again, I haven't done the research on that. All I can say is that I have not yet determined whether it's possible or impossible, but I think it's worth the research time.

    "Of all the options, closing the rift is the one that I suspect most likely to be doable without lithosealing. Rifts naturally want to close, it simply takes a long time for them to fully heal over, so making a seal to accelerate the process seems like it would be easier than making one to open it. Still, lithoseals would likely be useful even there.

    "Lithosealing has one big drawback as compared to paper sealing: the substrate is a lot harder to source. High-quality paper is expensive but relatively abundant, especially in Fire. Lithosealing requires rock with particular chakra properties. So far we know of only one natural source for the stuff, a cave in Honey that Orochimaru pointed us to."

    Tsunade cocked her head, frowning in memory. "Wait, cave in Honey? The one with lots of critters, and it terminates at a pool? Just down the way from a little shithole town?"

    "There are lots of critters and a pool, yes, but there's an underwater tunnel out of the pool that leads into another set of chambers. And yes, there's a civilian town nearby."

    "Huh." She thought for a moment. "We based out of there for, like, a week? All sorts of useful herbs in the area. I'd forgotten about it until now." Her smile was bittersweet. "Old times, I guess." She shook the thought aside. "Sorry, I untracked you. Continue."

    "No worries, ma'am. In the cave there is a giant crystal. We collected some pieces that had broken off from it and they turned out to be usable substrate for runes. I suspect that I could learn to create more of the stuff using the Earthshaping jutsu but it will take time. The Toad Sages felt that it likely wouldn't be too hard for a human jutsu hacker to create a purpose-built jutsu that made the stuff. Until one of those options comes to pass, the cave is the only source. I have three pieces right now and I expect to use them all up producing the rune that I'm going to demonstrate to you in the next week."

    "So you want me to send someone to get more of the stuff for you," she said, recognizing where this was going. "And probably order someone to start researching that jutsu."

    "We can probably hire the research done ourselves," Hazō said, shifting slightly in his chair and wincing as the movement pulled at the burned skin on his back. "Although if you could recommend the right person, that would be great."

    She pursed her lips in thought, then nodded. "Been a while since I interacted with that community and there's been some turnover, but I still remember a few names. I'll ask around and let the right people know that you have a job offer. As to the cave, why don't you do that one internally, especially if you want to keep this 'lithosealing' thing as a clan secret?"

    "The crystal..." He paused. "I want to be very precise about this, ma'am. What I saw was that I used Earthshaping and almost immediately a pair of vaguely humanoid creatures made of rock sprouted from the walls, dropped to the ground, and attacked us. They were extremely dangerous." Should he mention the obvious comparison to the one that had almost taken Jiraiya's arm? No, best not; the information had come from Itachi and it could only be a distraction right now.

    "What I believe happened was that I accidentally angered the crystal and it manifested defenders to protect itself. This is supported by the strange behavior of the beasts we faced on the way in; near the surface they acted like normal animals but as we went deeper they would attack immediately and fight to the death, like guards protecting a leader. I also note that the cave was extremely resistant to chakra adhesion, which might or might not be evidence of some intelligence controlling it. Finally, the strangest part: Kei and I found ourselves outmatched by the golem so we retreated to the Seventh Path, then returned some time later. We arrived somewhere other than where we departed from."

    "Huh," Tsunade said. She frowned in curiosity. "That's...weird. Not too many things can affect a Summoner's return point. You came out in a different cavern, I presume?"

    "Yes, ma'am."

    She nodded thoughtfully. "So you want to hire an A-rank, have me authorize a jōnin heavy combat squad to get you more of this crystal."

    "Yes, ma'am."

    She shrugged. "I don't see any reason why not, assuming that any of the surviving Leaf jōnin are interested. I won't order anyone to go, but I'll authorize the mission."

    Tension that he hadn't been aware of disappeared from Hazō's shoulders. A small amount of the pain went away as it stopped pulling on the stretched-tight skin of his burns. The relief was enough to make him twitch slightly.

    "Thank you, ma'am. There's a couple of other things that would be really helpful, if you don't mind...?"

    "Go ahead." She sounded distracted and she was studying him intently; her interest had sharpened the moment he twitched.

    "First off, I'd like to emphasize that I'm not trying to leverage you. I'm going to continue working on lithosealing regardless. I'll have that rune for you this week, I'll work on the rift closing rune, all that."

    She waved dismissively. "Yes yes, blah blah blah. Get to it. What do you want?"

    "First off, my burns hurt like crazy. It makes it hard to focus, especially with some of the more detail-oriented parts of research. I keep losing my place in things and having to start over. More importantly, it makes it harder to do infusions safely. I'd be very grateful for anything that would speed up my healing...?" He trailed off on a hopeful note, not wanting to make an explicit request.

    Tsunade, finest healer in the world, snorted amusement. "Most people, when they want to get my services as a personal healer, they throw money and favors at me. Have to admit that 'hey, help me not blow up the world while infusing a new supermega three-dee seal thingy' is a new approach." She nodded. "Fine. Be at Leaf General every morning at nine. You won't enjoy it, but we'll get you back on your feet sooner than not."

    The surge of relief was so powerful that Hazō had to catch himself from actually sagging in his chair. "Thank you, ma'am."

    "Yeah, whatever. I'm going to be healing someone at that time, might as well be you. If I ever need to skip a session or reschedule I'll try to remember to send a messenger if there's time. If I don't, try not to get your panties in a wad. If you can't help it, don't take it out on my staff or I'll punt you through a tree."

    "Yes, ma'am."

    "That it, or is there some other shiny object you're hoping for?"

    "Two things, ma'am. First, it would be great if you could clear the road for me. Put a really thorough security blackout over this whole effort; Akatsuki threatened to kill me if I did any more rift-related work and I'd like to not die. Stop the Hagoromo from dicking us around. I don't have time to play bullshit politics with them anymore. Keep Orochimaru from showing up and causing drama on our estate. That kind of thing."

    Her laugh was not a friendly thing. "Yeah, Asuma's journals had a whole lot of fun reading about the HaGō spat. Some of it was pretty funny but mostly it just pissed me off. I'll have a little chat with Ritsuo."

    Hazō's eyebrows were up. "'HaGō'?"

    "Hagoromo-Gōketsu," she unnecessarily explained. "He abbreviated lots of things."

    "I see." He struggled to cut the next words off but they slipped out regardless. "And 'spat'?"

    "Seems like the right word to me. He was mean to your sister so you punched him in the nose. He said nasty things about you behind your back so you set his favorite toy on fire. All pretty standard playground stuff. Nara fucking around with his cloth was cute but it still didn't involve anyone dying. Now, I could refer to it as 'an unsanctioned clan war that was wildly against the Will of Fire and Asuma should have come down on like the fist of the heavens and as his successor I should probably follow up on that retroactively, since apparently it's still not finished', but that's a mouthful. 'Spat' seems like a much friendlier word that doesn't require me to take notice, so I figure I'll use that. Make sense?"

    Gulp.

    "Perfect sense, ma'am."

    "In case you missed it, that chat that I'm going to have with Ritsuo? You and I are having the abbreviated form of that chat right now. You seem like a bright lad so hopefully I don't need to have the extended version...?"

    "No, ma'am."

    "Good. You understand that I'm not nearly as patient as Asuma?"

    Gulp and gulp again.

    "Yes, ma'am."

    "And that I'm a huge believer in the Will of Fire which says that all of Leaf's children are one big harmonious family who love each other and hold hands around the campfire with smiles on their faces and do not ever fuck around with each others' finances, or businesses, or reputations, or anything else?"

    "Yes, ma'am."

    "Great. What's the last thing?"

    "It would be very helpful if you could authorize Kagome-sensei to learn the Shadow Clone jutsu. I use it extensively for seal research and it would be a huge help if he could work alongside all of my different instances. Plus, it's way safer to have a clone do the initial infusion on a new seal prototype."

    She thought about that. "I...think that should really be left for the next Hokage. Bringing someone into the compartment is a big deal and I don't think I have the right to do it as an interim seatwarmer."

    Damnit.

    "Yes, ma'am."

    "Anything else?"

    "No, ma'am."

    She pushed her chair back and stood up. "Cool. C'mon, let's get you over to the hospital so I can rip a layer of burns off of you."

    "...Ma'am?"




    XP AWARD: 1 This update covered about 12 hours.

    Brevity XP: -2 The plan was 500-ish words.

    "GM had fun" XP: 1 from @Velorien, who very much enjoyed writing the previous chapter.

    It is now about 10am. Tsunade is taking you over to the hospital to give you a healing session. This will take 1-3 hours at which point you have the day in front of you.

    Vote time! What to do now?

    Voting ends on Wednesday, .

    Let us come together and bid a fond farewell to chapter 619! It's taken almost an IRL month (granted, with two interludes mixed in) and it's consumed approximately a short cowboy novel of words, but as of now it is officially complete. Huzzah!
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Two announcements:

    First, the above chapter is Sunday's update. Voting closes next Wednesday as normal.

    Second, we realize that there's a lot going on in the story right now and the playerbase needs to write longer plans to compensate. The most recent plan was 600 words, and the one before that was 1000 -- which is a record since we implemented brevity XP incentives ~400 chapters ago. This is fine, since the in-character circumstances justify the need for precision, but... When we implemented stagnancy rules, we wanted to keep it simple and apply it evenly to all in-character XP income. However, we are worried that this might cause a general trend towards excessively long plans that are a headache for QMs to manage, since the stagnancy multiplier lessens the sting of the brevity XP loss. So, we just want to put it out there -- please don't use stagnancy as an excuse to write over-long plans. If we feel like this interaction is being abused, we'll have to do something to strengthen brevity penalties again, and that would end up being a bookkeeping hassle.
     
    eaglejarl said:
    He didn't see it. Wow. He honestly didn't understand what he had just done. For a moment when he made his play she had thought that it was a masterpiece of improvisational politics in which Hazō had recognized that the swirling vortex of horribleness that was Akatsuki and everything surrounding them was currently the greatest threat to the Gōketsu, that Ami was the person with the most leverage and access on that question, and that he was trying to protect the team by binding Ami to them.

    Then she had woken up and remembered that this was Hazō.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    What the fuck Mari, give us some credit.

    eaglejarl said:
    That will probably have bad outcomes, since right now I don't think this is fixable and I'm hoping the players surprise me.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    lmao

    certified hivemind moment

    eaglejarl said:
    If I can't infuse a rune or if lithosealing doesn't work out more or less as I expect, I will step down as Clan Head."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    THAT WAS IN THE PLAN?!?!
     
    Cariyaga said:
    [] Action Plan: Sealing Analogies
    • Tell Kagome about what happened with Ami.
      • Hazou's sorry about not running it by him first, but relate the conversation to him by analogy to sealing research:
        • Like when doing research on novel seals, no matter how much research you do, sometimes while doing it in the moment, you come to a moment of clarity and need to act then and there.
          • Perhaps in this case it wasn't to prevent disaster in the same way, but it would, if missed... leave the opportunity for real trust to waste away. And that's sad.
        • It was a moment of vulnerability, on Ami's part, the kind that is really hard to fake, because it built off of months and years of knowing her, off her relationship with Kei and Mari and him, not off of things that she said explicitly.
          • Try to explain what he saw:
            • That Ami hadn't let herself care about anyone but Kei, and hid behind her persona as a social spec to prevent people from caring about her
            • That she was terrified to accept real trust, to accept the vulnerability that came from care
          • Try to explain his instinct:
            • He's begun to recognize when people are hurting, because of what's happened to them, because of what the world's done to them, rather than for who they are, or want to be.
            • And if it's something he can make better... he wants to. Especially for people that are important to him, or to those he cares about.
    Kinda not my best work, but eh. It's something to work off of next chance we get to write a plan.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Here you all are.
     
    Chadzou rears his head ever so slightly with the win-win situation. Either we have a 3D seal or we're finally free from being a clan head. Also asking Tsunade for Kagome to get SC (and we don't know that she refused yet) is points for the Kagome conversation. We want so desperately to get him it, but it's the pesky Hokages standing in our way.
     
    eaglejarl said:
    Absolutely under no circumstances should Hazō attempt to lie to Kagome about the facts of what happened. Kei, Snowflake, and Ami were all present. Kei and Snowflake wouldn't intentionally say anything but they might let it slip. Ami might either let it slip or use it as a weapon if she ever deemed it necessary or useful. There is no chance that Hazō could recover from that situation. He needs to share the facts accurately and the damage control needs to focus on his intentions, his feelings, what he did and didn't think about, etc.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    So to be clear: It would be a bad idea to lie that we intend to tell Ami about FOOM, and manipulate Kagome into accepting that judgment?
     
    Crossposted from Discord:
    • My suggestion, which is totally a pile of lies:
      • Akatsuki knows about our rift research. They have our rift research now. They intend to resurrect Nagato. They will kill us if they find out we kept doing rift research.
      • At this time, Akatsuki will gain full control over the rift. Our best plans involve opposing Akatsuki.
      • Ami has the most information about Akatsuki, is a major political force in Leaf, -insert reasons for Ami to be an ally here-. At this time her greatest weakness is her lack of personal power.
      • FOOM is our greatest clan secret. We intend to bargain with Tsunade about getting you SC so you can FOOM. We do not know if it will work, because -delicately explain his tendency to spill stuff-. Do you want to be read into FOOM right now, or when you are SC-prepared? -explain FOOM if needed-
      • We intend to give Ami FOOM so that a) she can fight Akatsuki, the biggest threat to Kei at this time; -insert other good reasons here-
      • We recognize that you do not trust her. But we need as many allies against Akatsuki as we can; we need them as empowered as we can in a reasonably short timeframe; -insert more reasons here-. We cannot afford to have Ami on-side and not empowered.
      • Kagome, are there reasons for us to not tell Ami, or ways we can help you be more comfortable with having Ami on-side and empowered?
      • -insert us manipulating Kagome into accepting our plan here-
    Keep in mind all this has us lie that we're consulting/telling Kagome before telling Ami, which is blatantly untrue. Etc. etc.
     
    I like it since technically we haven't told Ami. And we can always withdraw if we can't convince him. But also we need to address that Kagome doesn't really control who we trust/like.
     
    [X] Kagome: The Best Policy
    Word count: <400
    • Optimize with Mari.
      • Approach: explain facts, listen, then respond honestly/compassionately.
      • Goal: Show him you trust him by treating him like an emotionally mature, rational adult.
    • Brief Kagome on Akatsuki-related events. Explain lithosealing.
      • You're debriefing Tsunade in detail soon.
      • Leaf needs all jonin sealmasters at full capacity. You'll get it for him during the briefing or demonstration.
        • Once he has it, he gets WHOOSH.
    • Ami:
      • You told her about lithosealing and WHOOSH. Mari, explain why this was brilliant and reasonable.
        • Modelling social specs as lethal black boxes works for Kagome but Hazo needs to be able to interact with them regularly. Manipulations are possible to spot and counter. Social specs are fallible/have psychological vulnerabilities. Mari takes point.
        • Ami now views us as family, to the extent that she imperilled her relationship with Kei. Ami takes family as seriously as Kagome.
        • We need Ami's political and scheming power to deal with the Akatsuki.
      • You didn't do it for those reasons.
        • You've gone from scared missing-nin genin to jonin sealmaster, Summoner, Dragonslayer. This meteoric rise is because you trusted the right people.
        • Humanize Ami. She's someone traumatized by the world, leaning on disastrous defense mechanisms.
          • She's not a psychopath. Her values are Uplift-adjacent. She indisputably loves Kei. Even when furiously murderous, she wasn't power-hungry/psychopathic: she was overprotective and backed down.
          • She's fundamentally Goketsu: lost and looking for family.
          • She's not an inhuman monster. She wants to do better. Kagome isn't obligated to accept her, but you're giving her a chance.
        • Fundamentally, though? The same instinct to trust a feral sealmaster and a kidnapper social-spec jonin says you can trust Ami.
      • Apologize for not talking to him first. Circumstances spiralled, but it was a mistake. You're sorry.
      • This is the endgame.
        • You need Ami for plots and politics.
        • You need Kagome for sealmastery and security.
        • You aren't asking Kagome to trust Ami. But you are asking him to consider what he needs to trust Hazo.
      • Whatever Kagome decides, you trust. He isn't alone in the woods anymore. He has friends and a family. If he decides he can't trust Hazo again, Hazo knows he'll be okay.
    • If things go south, ask who Akayo was. Then... improvise.
      • Be gentle; it's potentially his core trauma. But don't be deterred.
      • You don't know anything, but lay out your suspicions. If validated, point out that this unfairly poisons his opinion of Ami.
      • Employ CCnJ.
     
    Last edited:
    Talking about a 3d explosive is a big premature. Since a chime seal can be reused and so is more useful. And we may not have enough substrate after. Although I guess if enough jonin sign up for the A rank cave mission we will get more
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top