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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Buggy said:
I think we need to bring up some of the counterpoints against going missing with Naruto.

  1. We figured out FOOM; maintaining research progress away from chakra sources will be difficult
  2. Itachi and Hidan have talked with us a concerning amount and can probably figure out that Naruto ordered us to go missing (as pointed out above)
  3. Uhhhh HDK this but the Color Cabal is also interested in us, and only held back by us being in Leaf.

We need to think up a third plan. This isn't going to end well.
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And also we have a lot to gain by cooperating with them, objectively. If we can't reasonably stop them, it makes perfect sense to squeeze out every possible advantage (Getting Jiraiya, Asuma and Akane back, Pain owing a life debt to us whatever that's worth to him etc) in return for helping them achieve their goals - which we can help them with because while we are chuunin at combat, we are Sealing : Yes and a Runesmith.

I kinda don't get it. The playerbase spends the entire quest building Hazou up as a researcher/crafter, and then instead of leveraging the power said build gives us, attempts to play politics with genin social stats, against S-rankers who are immune to politics, all quest long.

Marked for Politics would have made sense had we invested into socials - which we could have but did not.
Marked for Combat would have made sense had we invested into that - we could fight a weak S-ranker alone by now if we monospecced.
Marked for Research is what we are best at and we seldom ever try to leverage that.
 
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[-] NOT AN ACTION PLAN: The Insane Guy Suggests Insane Things
Word Count: ???
  • We believe Akatsuki won't buy us "going missing", and destroy Leaf in response.
    • Summarize the conversations Hazou's had with Itachi/Hidan. Make note of:
      • Hazou's relations with civilians/people he's never met before;
      • Itachi stating his intent to resurrect Akane;
      • Hazou not seeing Pain as an apocalypse-level event.
    • Hazou going missing is not unbelievable, but suspicious enough that Akatsuki might not buy it.
      • Hazou could certainly buy Akatsuki destroying Leaf anyway, just to send a message.
    • Hazou isn't a social-spec and could certainly have missed something. Are we wrong?
  • Hazou has some alternatives, which are insane but in-character to suggest if he ever did choose to go missing:
    • Long-term mission: Hunt a Summon Scroll (Hazou's thinking the Forbidden Dungeon), and use the long absence as cover.
      • Akatsuki would know our location (Naruto has no reason to hide this from them) but it provides more plausible deniability for Leaf AND we could be forewared via Seventh Path.
    • Fake our death: Make it seem we died in a verifable way so that our disappearance won't arouse Akatsuki's suspicion.
      • We may need to enlist Orochimaru for this - he survived an Akatsuki assassination and convinced them he was dead.
    • Set Kagome on it: Kagome did a lot of the rift work, and he's under everyone's radar. Nobody suspects him.
      • Hazou may be the better sealmaster now, but Kagome's still very skilled, and dedicated.
 
I actually don't think we should ever say either yes or no to Naruto because that falls under information that he simply doesn't need to know. If we stay, we stay. If we leave, he doesn't need or want to know anything in advance unless we need to arrange for something special.

But we should absolutely be asking for the moon right now. We can play it like we're going to go missing and need everything from Leaf before we do, but we can and should ask for all Leaf's blanks, all the blanks going to the Akatsuki, and whatever else we can think of which would credibly be useful for Rift and runic research.

We should also tell him how we cracked Minatosealing and see if he might have anything more, and ask if he has any lore.
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
I actually don't think we should ever say either yes or no to Naruto because that falls under information that he simply doesn't need to know. If we stay, we stay. If we leave, he doesn't need or want to know anything in advance unless we need to arrange for something special.

But we should absolutely be asking for the moon right now. We can play it like we're going to go missing and need everything from Leaf before we do, but we can and should ask for all Leaf's blanks, all the blanks going to the Akatsuki, and whatever else we can think of which would credibly be useful for Rift and runic research.

We should also tell him how we cracked Minatosealing and see if he might have anything more, and ask if he has any lore.
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This was exactly what I was thinking.
 
What is everyone's thoughts on revealing FOOM to Naruto?

I think it has a decent chance of offering mild to moderate benefits. Maybe Naruto can tutor us in his well-practiced Shadow Clone Learning Techniques and we get a boost. Maybe we get very lucky and he has a resolve-boosting jutsu from the Toads or something.

It gives him a piece of the puzzle; this is key to our growth and it would be very hard to maintain if we go missing.

It's unlikely to backfire; telling him technically makes it a not-clan-secret, but he just asked us to go missing. There is no way he turns around and fucks us over given the level of trust he just displayed.
 
Our best bet for hiding our research from Akatsuki is probably by enlisting Orochimaru's aid, at least when it comes to Lithosealing.

He'll also have ample reason to wish to hide Lithosealing so convincing him shouldn't be too hard, and he can't kill us off either because due to Hazou not having utterly crippled XP gain due to stagnacy barriers like what Orochimaru has to deal with (And also because of FOOM but Orochimaru doesn't know that) Hazou can level Lithosealing much, much faster then Oro can.

Meaning that if Orochimaru doesn't want to spend a veritable eternity learning Lithosealing, he's going to need to be able to copy Hazou's homework (Read: Basically Hazou tutoring him like Tsunade once tutored Noburi) in order to level Lithosealing in even a remotely timely fashion
 
cog-nito said:
Our best bet for hiding our research from Akatsuki is probably by enlisting Orochimaru's aid, at least when it comes to Lithosealing.

He'll also have ample reason to wish to hide Lithosealing so convincing him shouldn't be too hard, and he can't kill us off either because due to Hazou not having utterly crippled XP gain due to stagnacy barriers like what Orochimaru has to deal with (And also because of FOOM but Orochimaru doesn't know that) Hazou can level Lithosealing much, much faster then Oro can.

Meaning that if Orochimaru doesn't want to spend a veritable eternity learning Lithosealing, he's going to need to be able to copy Hazou's homework (Read: Basically Hazou tutoring him like Tsunade once tutored Noburi) in order to level Lithosealing in even a remotely timely fashion
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How does this work?

Itachi shows up, in Leaf. He finds Hazō eating a bowl of Ramen, and drags him by his ear to the Gōketsu clan compound. He demands our most recent research project.

We say anything other than "Primordial Sealing" and itachi knows we're lying out our ass. 3 days of torture later, itachi knows all of the details.

Is Orochimaru at the Ramen stall? Is he at the Gōketsu clan compound? Is he magically summoned by Hazō being threatened?

No no and no. It only works if we're glued to Orochimaru to the point that a cabal of hostile s rankers can't find a single moment that we're away from him. The thread will not do that. Think about what that would actually entail.
 
Twinnstars said:
How does this work?

Itachi shows up, in Leaf. He finds Hazō eating a bowl of Ramen, and drags him by his ear to the Gōketsu clan compound. He demands our most recent research project.

We say anything other than "Primordial Sealing" and itachi knows we're lying out our ass. 3 days of torture later, itachi knows all of the details.

Is Orochimaru at the Ramen stall? Is he at the Gōketsu clan compound? Is he magically summoned by Hazō being threatened?

No no and no. It only works if we're glued to Orochimaru to the point that a cabal of hostile s rankers can't find a single moment that we're away from him. The thread will not do that. Think about what that would actually entail.
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It works because all Itachi is going to care about is whether or not we're doing research on the rift, we'll earnestly say no and Itachi will leave.

He's not going to periodically show up to steal Hazou's lunchmoney, both because the only Akatsuki members even interested in Hazou's non-rift research are Sasori (Who's super busy with the rift itself) and maybe Konan (Who is super busy running Hidden Rain).

Occasionally showing up to steal Hazou's clan secrets with no justification would be ruinous for AMITY, probably leading to it's fairly swift collapse, which Akatsuki is absolutely not going to want for as long as Pain has yet to be ressurected and they can verify Pain's opinion on whether they should keep AMITY around or do some sort of plan B giant ritual.
 
cog-nito said:
It works because all Itachi is going to care about is whether or not we're doing research on the rift, we'll earnestly say no and Itachi will leave
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... the entire dilemma here is whether we should leave Leaf so we can work on dimensionalism, and my question was how apprenticing with Oro would help us work on dimensionalism, as an alternative to leaving.

For your example, what is the difference between an apprentice hazō, and one who took up poetry instead of seal research? If there isn't one, why on earth would we take the apprenticeship?
 
Twinnstars said:
... the entire dilemma here is whether we should leave Leaf so we can work on dimensionalism, and my question was how apprenticing with Oro would help us work on dimensionalism, as an alternative to leaving.

For your example, what is the difference between an apprentice hazō, and one who took up poetry instead of seal research? If there isn't one, why on earth would we take the apprenticeship?
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It doesn't, without leaving leaf we cannot work on Dimensionalism/the rift at all.

I was merely talking about keeping Lithosealing secret from Akatsuki while staying in Leaf, by working with Orochimaru he can help with Lithosealing Opsec due Hazou in the short term (So until the Akatsuki stop occasionally dropping in on us) for example only doing Lithosealing when he's with Orochimaru.

And this time spent doing Lithosealing research would be publically disguised as Hazou being apprenticed to Orochimaru.

The benefit to this is that Akatsuki won't be discovering Lithosealing due to randomly dropping in on us.
 
Buggy said:
What is everyone's thoughts on revealing FOOM to Naruto?

I think it has a decent chance of offering mild to moderate benefits. Maybe Naruto can tutor us in his well-practiced Shadow Clone Learning Techniques and we get a boost. Maybe we get very lucky and he has a resolve-boosting jutsu from the Toads or something.

It gives him a piece of the puzzle; this is key to our growth and it would be very hard to maintain if we go missing.

It's unlikely to backfire; telling him technically makes it a not-clan-secret, but he just asked us to go missing. There is no way he turns around and fucks us over given the level of trust he just displayed.
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I am highly in favor of it.

The whole brewing conflict regarding the Rift has to do with returning S-rankers from the afterlife in order to impose a new world order. If we have a back up of everyone in Leaf FOOM'ing together to take on a hostile Pain+AMITY alliance (aka our worse case scenario as noted in the last update) that would be an acceptable contingency for an unacceptable peace enforced by Pain.

It would narratively satisfying and hilarious if Hazou and Kagome acted like Frodo and Sam respectively, trying to secretly defeat Pain returning just like Sauron and Akatsuki as the Nazguls are trying everything in their power to find the Rune-bearers. Except in this story, Naruto as Aragorn at the Black Gates actually is going to beat the shit out of all of his enemies using the power of friendship amplified by FOOM with his army of newly minted S-rankers.
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but FOOM doesn't do anything for Naruto right? His entire existence is just FOOM because of the amount of clones he can support.
 
Velorien said:
"A Crusade refers to organised military activity for the purpose of exterminating the members of the Dragon Clan on the Seventh Path. A Crusader is a summon or other sapient being taking action outside their home territory with the intent of engaging the Dragons in combat, or providing support in the field for those who do. In the event that a summon or other sapient being's home territory is invaded by Dragons, this definition will apply to them also for the duration of that conflict. A Crusading Clan is any clan which has dispatched forces as part of a Crusade.

"Article 1: All signatories pledge to take no military action against the Crusading Clans for the duration of the contract, including dispatching those under their command to enter the Crusading Clans' territory except by explicit invitation from the clan boss or their appointed representatives, condoning such entry without orders, or interfering with the free movement of Crusaders through their territory.

"Article 2: All signatories pledge to protect the Crusading Clans for the duration of the contract, providing military aid within the limits set by the Crusading Clan clan boss or their appointed representatives for the specific purposes of securing that clan's borders, removing hostiles from within those borders, and preventing hostile action by third parties against Crusaders within the signatories' territories.
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I believe we may have something here.

Currently, Leaf is under threat by a number of future factors. The most pressing one is Akatsuki and the demands it issued for the death of Kakazu. If those demands aren't satisfied, Leafs destruction is a steong outcome. The other threats appear if AMITY breaks or Pein is revived. On a more personal level, further rift research may invite reprisals on the Goketsu and Leaf by extension. With these dilemmas on the forecast, it seemed prudent to consider

According to the Crusading document Ami originally proposed, the Goketsu, Hyuuga, Sarutobi (Kurenai?), Minami, Senju, and KEI should qualify as Crusading clans. This represents a significant amount of Leafs military as well operational power. Furthermore, the Leaf summoners, are defined as a crusaders. This, could potentially apply to Leaf as well, but it may be too much of stretch for the 7th path clans if it was actually applied to the human path.

The invocation of defense for Leaf by the 7th path crusading clans wasn't used in the face of Hidan's assassination nor has it been for threats Leaf is up against. That makes sense when we see how difficult it was to get the crusade functioning beyond the conclave in their own dimension.

So how do we use this document to not only ensure Leaf coverage, but get Akatsuki to stop breathing so closely on Hazou's neck? I think the Leaf crusaders and crusading clans need to devote more resources to the crusade beyond diplomatic support. In the event that this support does materialize, Leaf proper could be recognized as crusading entity with all the protections, privileges, and restraints that it entails. Support could come in the form of summoning Clans and their summoners trading jutsu if possible or the sealmaster collaborations for Skyslicer-teir weapons or defenses.

Should we do this, the likely outcome I'm looking for is 7th path backing provides Leaf with a counter to Akatsuki or opportunistic villages within the AMITY framework. Right now, it's being used as a cover to extort and potentially bludgeon Leaf, which is unacceptable. A Leaf which is weak, compromised, and has to worry over the security of the Land of Fire or Leaf is one who has summoners and a village that can't fully commit to the crusade. A Crusader Leaf is a win-win for the 7th path and Leaf. In my opinion, this is a possible 3rd option that we should bring up with Naruto and the clan.
 
Orisha91 said:
I believe we may have something here.

Currently, Leaf is under threat by a number of future factors. The most pressing one is Akatsuki and the demands it issued for the death of Kakazu. If those demands aren't satisfied, Leafs destruction is a steong outcome. The other threats appear if AMITY breaks or Pein is revived. On a more personal level, further rift research may invite reprisals on the Goketsu and Leaf by extension. With these dilemmas on the forecast, it seemed prudent to consider

According to the Crusading document Ami originally proposed, the Goketsu, Hyuuga, Sarutobi (Kurenai?), Minami, Senju, and KEI should qualify as Crusading clans. This represents a significant amount of Leafs military as well operational power. Furthermore, the Leaf summoners, are defined as a crusaders. This, could potentially apply to Leaf as well, but it may be too much of stretch for the 7th path clans if it was actually applied to the human path.

The invocation of defense for Leaf by the 7th path crusading clans wasn't used in the face of Hidan's assassination nor has it been for threats Leaf is up against. That makes sense when we see how difficult it was to get the crusade functioning beyond the conclave in their own dimension.

So how do we use this document to not only ensure Leaf coverage, but get Akatsuki to stop breathing so closely on Hazou's neck? I think the Leaf crusaders and crusading clans need to devote more resources to the crusade beyond diplomatic support. In the event that this support does materialize, Leaf proper could be recognized as crusading entity with all the protections, privileges, and restraints that it entails. Support could come in the form of summoning Clans and their summoners trading jutsu if possible or the sealmaster collaborations for Skyslicer-teir weapons or defenses.

Should we do this, the likely outcome I'm looking for is 7th path backing provides Leaf with a counter to Akatsuki or opportunistic villages within the AMITY framework. Right now, it's being used as a cover to extort and potentially bludgeon Leaf, which is unacceptable. A Leaf which is weak, compromised, and has to worry over the security of the Land of Fire or Leaf is one who has summoners and a village that can't fully commit to the crusade. A Crusader Leaf is a win-win for the 7th path and Leaf. In my opinion, this is a possible 3rd option that we should bring up with Naruto and the clan.
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Highlighting for clarity doesn't inherently violate the "no shouting" rule, but posting entire paragraphs in intrusive red is egregious. 24-hour threadban.

As a personal Velorien note, I don't see what bright colours achieve here that ordinary bold wouldn't.
 
Paperclipped said:
No. If you cannot follow what your teacher is teaching you at the start of a course, satisfying the prerequisites by the end does nothing for you -- you'll still be hopelessly lost.
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Follow up question, then. Assuming Hazou had the prerequisites, does he think he could figure the stunt out himself with the notes he has from Jiraiya/Oro collabing + notes of some example seals? Similar to the way we did Primordial Sealing? And hope to do with Minato Seals

Also pinging @eaglejarl @Velorien
 
faflec said:
I am starting to become more and more convinced that going missing is a bad idea. Itachi has now spoken to Hazou twice, and Hidan has even more. And just as Hazou has gleaned an understanding of their personality, so too have they. Itachi and Hidan will expect Hazou to take their threats seriously, and that Hazou would not see a resurrected Pain as a apocalypse-level event. As a consequence, going missing-nin at this time, while not completely out of character for Hazou, is something Akatsuki would not have predicted Hazou would do of his own accord. It is, however, something that people in Leaf would not want, given what Akatsuki's done to them and to Naruto specifically.

I highly expect that, if Hazou goes missing, Akatsuki will immediately suspect that Naruto (or another high-level agent in Leaf) convinced Hazou to go missing. This...this will go badly for Leaf.
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I think their lack of intel here is more stark than you might think. They don't know what happens behind closed doors, or what could have been said to Hazou that convinced him this was necessary. It only takes one hypothesis where Hazou might feel an urgency to defect to cast the conclusion into doubt, and everyone else in Naruto's inner circle has every reason to believe Naruto stuck to the rules here.

As far as Itachi is concerned, Hazou sees not only the rift but also Pain's return as a good thing for the world. Of course he wouldn't fear the rift falling into Akatsuki's hands, but he would fear the risk of the rift being closed. Like, say, by Orochimaru, notoriously uncontrollable and now aware of the rift.

My thoughts are a little scattered right now, but in the end I don't think the line of reasoning you hold up here is all that clear-cut. Not when everyone involved save Naruto himself is fully totally confident no such scheme exists, not when people who know Hazou well honestly say that it sounds like something he'd do, and even if they dig deep enough to find everything else Naruto shared with his inner circle all they'd find is an even more plausible hypothesis, that Hazou could not risk the rift being destroyed.
 
faflec said:
I am starting to become more and more convinced that going missing is a bad idea. Itachi has now spoken to Hazou twice, and Hidan has even more. And just as Hazou has gleaned an understanding of their personality, so too have they. Itachi and Hidan will expect Hazou to take their threats seriously, and that Hazou would not see a resurrected Pain as a apocalypse-level event. As a consequence, going missing-nin at this time, while not completely out of character for Hazou, is something Akatsuki would not have predicted Hazou would do of his own accord. It is, however, something that people in Leaf would not want, given what Akatsuki's done to them and to Naruto specifically.
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Inferno Vulpix said:
As far as Itachi is concerned, Hazou sees not only the rift but also Pain's return as a good thing for the world. Of course he wouldn't fear the rift falling into Akatsuki's hands, but he would fear the risk of the rift being closed. Like, say, by Orochimaru, notoriously uncontrollable and now aware of the rift.
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I would be very, very cautious about assuming what Itachi believes and then making overall plans based on those assumptions.

Instead we can do thought experiments on what Akatsuki would consider failure modes and what circumstances lead to those modes. As far as Leaf knows, Hazou and Orochimaru are the only seal-masters known to Akatsuki capable of influencing the rift and (plausibly in Oro's case) know about the rift. I would assume that other non-seal-masters members of Akatsuki are busy not only maintaining AMITY as AMITY's failure would also be a failure mode for them, but when they have the time they investigate other village's seal human resources with whatever pretenses they can fabricate.

The fact that Hazou can influence the rift is enough to mark him for repeating "random" inspections and research theft from Akatsuki. Hazou's personal beliefs are irrelevant to Akatsuki's worst case scenario contingency planning.
 
I think its clear that in either category of options it makes sense to wait and heal up in Leaf while acquiring all the everything possible now that Naruto is Hokage.

Hazou should be Schrodingers Treason Dragon until its execution time for one or the other.
 
RandomOTP said:
You know, I wonder just how much Naruto dislikes Hazou.

In his first private meeting with Hazou, Naruto (in his capacity as Hokage) encourages Hazou to go Missing.

As much as we annoyed Asuma, we never pissed him off that much! Rip
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I am 100% hoping hazo makes a joke along these lines in the next update. "I know we had our differences but I thought we were starting to get along recently... " etc
 
Black King said:
This isn't possible. We need like...a lot of ninja's chakra just for our own little people to FOOM. Not even every Jonin could FOOM unless Leaf shut down doing any and all missions. Also FOOM takes years to come to fruition so Pain would still win.
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We don't know how long the rift race will last and figuring out the best distribution of FOOM recipients could easily be calculated by Kei and Shikamaru.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
We don't know how long the rift race will last and figuring out the best distribution of FOOM recipients could easily be calculated by Kei and Shikamaru.
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FOOM startup is significant enough that I don't think it actually does benefit anyone at this point besides the ones who already have it*, assuming they only have a year to use it.

*only exception I can imagine is Kurenai who probably has SC leveled decently and also has high resolve as a jonin social specialist.
 
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