Remove ads

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Reader mode
DanZapman said:
I don't think that Goketsu will be ruined.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
eaglejarl said:
"Regardless, even if you could escape the consequences, the Gōketsu who stay home couldn't. They will all be contaminated by your treason, and—"

"They?" Hazō asked, eyebrows going up.

"I suppose it could be 'we'," Mari admitted. "I was assuming I would go with you, but maybe I would be more of a hindrance than a help since I can't reverse summon. If I stay, it would be 'we'.

"I'll be honest, Hazō: if you go and you think I'd be a net positive, I'll go with you. I've spent too long raising you up to let you get eaten by vampire grass now, so I'll go. I'll be sad, but I'll go."

"Sad?"

"I'm a city girl at heart; I like the hot springs, and the shopping, and the politicking and, yes, getting sex on the regular." She rolled her eyes back in her head and moaned in exaggerated delight. "Oh, ancestors, yes. Being able to have all the sex whenever I want is awesome. That said, if I go with you—or, more importantly, if Noburi and Kei and you and I all go together, which is what I'm sure you would really want—the response will be beyond cataclysmic. So far beyond that I literally can't think of words for it.

"Then there's the other side. Whoever we don't bring with us is going to twist in the breeze. How many hours do you think it'll be before Akatsuki shows up to get more sealing information from you, finds you gone, and tortures random Gōketsu ninja for information on where you are?"

"I am not a mystery gift," Hazō said. "They can't show up and beat me for yummy treats every time they get snackish. And they can't beat my people for information they don't have. If I go missing, I'm hardly going to leave an itinerary."

She shrugged. "Tell them that."

Hazō chewed his frustration.

"Forget the external threats like Akatsuki," Mari said. "What about the internal ones? I have no idea what would happen to the clan. No one does, because there's no precedent. Almost certainly, no other clan is willing to work with us and the ones that like us—the Nara, the Yamanaka, the Aburame, maybe one or two others—are forced to distance themselves so they don't get splashed."

Hazō thought about that. "I'm sad to hear the Akimichi don't like us," he said after a moment, smiling a bit.

"Eh. I don't think they dislike us. I'd say they can take or leave us."

"Well, we can't be having that. I expect everyone to like us, Mari. Get on that, won't you?"

She gave an overly dramatic salute. "Sir, yes sir. Seriously, though. If I were in Hagoromo's shoes, I would get the Clan Council to pressure Naruto into dissolving the Gōketsu. Regardless of what happened to the clan, you going missing again would kill any possibility of other missing-nin ever coming in from the cold, or anyone changing villages in the future. We've been counting on that as a societal pressure towards peace—overly warlike or oppressive villages will find their people trickling away to calmer, more liberal villages. There will be more cultural exchange, leading to greater international empathy. You are the first ninja to ever transfer nationalities and become accepted at the highest levels of power despite the universal consensus that missing-nin can't be trusted. If you run, you confirm that belief and destroy any hope of building on our success."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Seems like the hagoromo uplift-support is a great deal. Anything that gives them positive ties to uplift and the non-foreign goketsu is more protection from having the clan disbanded.
 
Left-Hand Mutant said:
Seems like the hagoromo uplift-support is a great deal. Anything that gives them positive ties to uplift and the non-foreign goketsu is more protection from having the clan disbanded.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Agreed. It also helps spread more literacy, faster.

More hands on deck is always a good thing, and the cooperation between the conservative Hagoromo and the liberal Nara will help ease tensions with their allies and the more moderate clans (in general terms). The open cooperation will also make taking Till'n'Fills a more palatable option for those who were reluctant to do so, previously, for fear of being seen as making a political statement.

If Kei is concerned about religious indoctrination (which she really shouldn't be, we have WoG that the Will of Fire is "a ninja religion, for ninja") then she should expand the NFF's scope to include instruction on critical thinking skills, like the GED does. That way, the civilians can receive their literacy and also examine the theology with an analytical eye.
 
Re: The_Bomb (can't actually quote since the post is 2 quotes that come up blank when replying)-
I don't take Mari's word at 100% but that's still a fair point and a good reminder. Damn. The main issue is, us, Hazo, going missing is not really negotiable at all if we do go missing (probably seems needed) so I don't know how salvageable that is.
 
Yeah, Kei's recent "advice" on the Hagoromo shows that we can't fully trust our advisors to give us their read on the situation instead of trying to push us to do what they want, but Mari nonetheless makes very good points.
 
And yet, staying in Leaf makes opsec impossible. The Akatsuki will learn about lithosealing, about our Rift sealwork, and about our plans to kill them.

They will learn about it (perhaps from Hazou's work in the Dragonwar, or from the Arachnid Boss, or from one of the countless Summons who know Hazou's working on the Great Seal), and then come to Leaf (where we live) to beat the shinies out of us. Or threaten the lives of everyone around us.

They've already asked for Hazou's contribution (albeit, as a Sealing slave, which betrays how little they respect him), and Hazou declined their "invitation." Unless they decide to really make with the honey/carrots, I expect them to go straight to the vinegar/stick.

Remember: these are the people who welcomed Hidan into their ranks, call him an equal, and indulge his Jashinist genocides/serial slaughters. Their idea of diplomacy is "do what we say or we kill you," or even "join us by being our chained sealing slave."
 
I maintain that the Gouketsu-as-a-clan is going to be destroyed if we leave and that fighting against that is futile and wasteful. Instead, we should set up a dead man's switch which offers the Nara a deal where they get all of our assets and a bunch of secrets (Earthshaping as a way to generate infinite money? notes on lithosealing?) in exchange for adopting all our civilians and leftover ninja, maintaining their standards of living, and continuing whatever Uplift projects we had in motion.

This is clearly the best way forward if we actually care about our people and projects, rather than the ephemeral "Gouketsu" label.
 
Last edited:
Oneiros said:
What's preventing them from coming to leaf and murderring everyone when they hear we are researching ways to kill them?

How do we convince Naruto to let us do this? We are already forbidden to do rift research since it endangers Leaf and this is no different
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Are you saying the strategic situation is so bad that Leaf isn't even permitted to build static defenses in its own core territory? Hiding the fact that the new array is specialized against Akatsuki ought to be sufficient for plausible deniability, and Oro would be the one rolling for that.
 
Noumero said:
I maintain that the Gouketsu-as-a-clan is going to be destroyed if we leave and that fighting against that is futile and wasteful. Instead, we should set up a dead man's switch which offers the Nara a deal where they get all of our assets and a bunch of secrets (Earthshaping as a way to generate infinite money? notes on lithosealing?) in exchange for adopting all our civilians and leftover ninja, maintaining their standards of living, and continuing whatever Uplift projects we had in motion. This is clearly the best way forward if we actually care about our people and projects, rather than the ephemeral "Gouketsu" label.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Huh, this is actually a very good idea I haven't considered before. How do we get the dead man's switch to function?
 
Sir Stompy said:
Huh, this is actually a very good idea I haven't considered before. How do we get the dead man's switch to function?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Pay someone to deliver Shikamaru an encrypted message that only he has the key to, which would outline the deal's conditions and point to some random spot in the wilderness in which we'll bury a storage seal containing Hazou-signed orders allowing the adoptions and the transfer of resources. Separately, we install some mechanism that triggers if and only if the Gouketsu's people are absorbed into the Nara, and sends Shikamaru another encypted-in-a-way-only-he-could-decrypt message pointing to another storage seal buried in a random location, this one containing whatever secret information we want to give him.

Not sure what's the best way to set up "some mechanism that triggers iff the Nara absorb the Gouketsu", though. Pay a random non-Gouketsu civilian to deliver the letter if they observe this happening? Leave an encrypted-in-a-way-only-he-could-decrypt message to Gaku, instructing him to pass the letter on iff the Nara uphold their part of the deal?

Also, I'd prefer to optimize all of that with Kei first, which would require looping her in just before we leave Leaf (but, like, as little as hours before). Or we can loop her in after we've left, and then have her pass optimized letters to their recipients through Ruri.
 
Last edited:
Noumero said:
Separately, we install some mechanism that triggers if and only if the Gouketsu's people are absorbed into the Nara, and sends Shikamaru another encypted-in-a-way-only-he-could-decrypt message pointing to another storage seal buried in a random location, this one containing whatever secret information we want to give him.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This does seem like a sticking point. We'd need to keep a line of contact with Leaf for it to work. Since for the Nara to take in the Goketsu civvies/nin we would need to be declared traitors first.
Noumero said:
Also, I'd prefer to optimize all of that with Kei first, which would require looping her in just before we leave Leaf (but, like, as little as hours before). Or we can loop her in after we've left, and then have her pass optimized letters to their recipients through Ruri
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think the plan is to loop her in after we leave to go on a Scroll hunt. But we'll have 2ish months before they suspect us of being late intentionally. It would be possible to send letters via the Seventh Path before we are anathema in Leaf.
 
We should also see if the Hagoromo can deal with the tax issues(villagers getting scalped hard). It would solve an important problem, and be great for the Hagoromo's popularity/influence among civilians, increasing their buy-in.


I think folding the leftover goketsu into nara is doomed. These people would probably rather go to KEI/Kei. Also communication or planning with Shika is an opsec risk and undermines the appearance of a genuine betrayal where we don't care about those left behind.


We should probably tell Mari our specific missing-nin plan sometime in the next month, so she can subtly prep both Goketsu/Kei to survive without us, and do what she can to (subtly!) get Uplift emotionally ready to leave.
 
Last edited:
Left-Hand Mutant said:
I think folding the leftover goketsu into nara is doomed. These people would probably rather go to Kei. Also communication or planning with Shika is an opsec risk and undermines the appearance of a genuine betrayal where we don't care about those left behind.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Agreed, honestly. Once we leave, they'll likely return to the KEI, and share our shinies amongst them, buying the KEI's protection with Goketsu Shinies (lootboxes, jutsu, seals, etc).

Blerg.
 
Sir Stompy said:
This does seem like a sticking point. We'd need to keep a line of contact with Leaf for it to work.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think so? All we need is to somehow implement the decision tree of "IF [the Nara absorb the Gouketsu] THEN [Shikamaru gets pointed to the location with the payment]". That decision tree doesn't necessarily need to be implemented on the substrate of our minds. "Tell some inconspicuous civilian to give this letter to Shikamaru if you observe this happening" should work in theory, as long as we can find a sufficiently reliable inconspicuous civilian (i. e., one that would indeed pass the letter on if and only if the Nara absorb the Gouketsu – rather than either passing it on regardless in the hopes of the Nara rewarding them, or getting cold feet and never delivering it).

RandomOTP said:
Agreed, honestly. Once we leave, they'll likely return to the KEI, and share our shinies amongst them, buying the KEI's protection with Goketsu Shinies (lootboxes, jutsu, seals, etc).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What about the civilians, which we have way more of?

Left-Hand Mutant said:
I think folding the leftover goketsu into nara is doomed. These people would probably rather go to Kei. Also communication or planning with Shika is an opsec risk and undermines the appearance of a genuine betrayal where we don't care about those left behind.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That is how a genuine betrayal, done by a Hazou who still cares about his people but feels he can't stay in Leaf due to the Akatsuki, would look like. We're not pretending to be a Hazou who was a heartless monster all along.
 
Last edited:
Noumero said:
That is how a genuine betrayal, done by a Hazou who still cares about his people but feels he can't stay in Leaf due to the Akatsuki, would look like. We're not pretending to be a Hazou who was a heartless monster all along.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If it looks like the Nara/Leaf are collaborating with Hazo, that's really bad.
And yeah, we do want to signal that we don't care about those we leave behind. The more we look like we care the more likely they are to be tortured or killed as coercion/reprisal.
 
If we can somehow tell a whole lot of people in leaf what are motivation to leave is and framing in the most patriotic light it might give us some sympathy
 
Left-Hand Mutant said:
If it looks like the Nara/Leaf are collaborating with Hazo, that's really bad.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It doesn't matter how it looks like, it matters what actually happened. If the Akatsuki, or the Clan Council, go to interrogate the Nara, Shikamaru would be able to honestly say that this wasn't pre-planned. He would likely also be able to honestly say that he doesn't have many sympathies towards the Gouketsu's actions, and that the deal we set up was worth taking on purely pragmatic grounds.

The Nara would likely suffer some reputational hit for associating with us, yes, but as long as the secrets we're offering them are lucrative enough, it should still be massively net-beneficial for them.

And yeah, we do want to signal that we don't care about those we leave behind. The more we look like we care the more likely they are to be tortured or killed as coercion/reprisal.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The less coherent the Gouketsu are as an entity, the less appealing the idea of trying to target them to get at us will be. If they're sitting in a group in a specific compound, it's easy to kidnap them or threaten to nuke them or just nuke them for psychological warfare. If they've been assimilated into the general Leaf/Nara population? Yeah, I'd love to see the Akatsuki poring over a mountain of legal documents and hunting our people down one by one. I bet the idea won't even occur to them, if there isn't a well-delineated "Gouketsu Clan" that could be targeted as retaliation.
 
I would like to stress that we don't need to be missing. We need to go missing when our assault against the Akatsuki starts. We could very simply go on a "long term mission", leave Naruto a letter in which we say "We're going missing for X, Y and Z reasons, it's your choice if you want to make it public that a Clan head ran away or keep it under wraps and not embarass yourself/walk back your threat if we succeed/let the entire world they can send hunter-nins to capture us(the inventor of skywalkers)".
Naruto will know it's "fake" and keep it secret, but when the Akatsuki comes knocking, he can honestly say he didn't know anything about it and that Hazou went missing-nin by himself and he just kept it secret to a variety of very sensible reasons.
Goketsu? By the time it's discovered, it will have a new leader, capable of distancing itself from us. Simple and easy.

EDIT: It's very important to point out that Hazou is someone every geopolitical actor would love to have in T&I, or under their payroll. So Innocent!Naruto has a very vested interest in not telling anyone Hazou is currently missing. Because if the other villages know we're fair game, they would send people to capture us, and if they succeed that would be very bad for Leaf.
 
Last edited:
Having a "We don't negotiate with terrorists" policy doesn't work until you prove it, often at great cost.

If Itachi gets concerned he's going to yoink Ino.
 
Lord Marshal said:
I would like to stress that we don't need to be missing. We need to go missing when our assault against the Akatsuki starts. We could very simply go on a "long term mission", leave Naruto a letter in which we say "We're going missing for X, Y and Z reasons, it's your choice if you want to make it public that a Clan head ran away or keep it under wraps and not embarass yourself/walk back your threat if we succeed/let the entire world they can send hunter-nins to capture us(the inventor of skywalkers)".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
True.

Better yet, let's non-suspiciously do multiple long-term missions away from Konoha while we conduct our runecraft research.

Spend a month or two doing a scroll hunt with the clan, then come back for a short period to take advantage of Konoha's resources and keep our Uplift projects going. Then, repeat.

One to two months before we start assassinating Akatsuki we should publicly go missing, but before then? Let's not light a fire under Sasori's ass until we absolutely have to.
 
Lord Marshal said:
I would like to stress that we don't need to be missing. We need to go missing when our assault against the Akatsuki starts. We could very simply go on a "long term mission", leave Naruto a letter in which we say "We're going missing for X, Y and Z reasons, it's your choice if you want to make it public that a Clan head ran away or keep it under wraps and not embarass yourself/walk back your threat if we succeed/let the entire world they can send hunter-nins to capture us(the inventor of skywalkers)".
Naruto will know it's "fake" and keep it secret, but when the Akatsuki comes knocking, he can honestly say he didn't know anything about it and that Hazou went missing-nin by himself and he just kept it secret to a variety of very sensible reasons.
Goketsu? By the time it's discovered, it will have a new leader, capable of distancing itself from us. Simple and easy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is literally the plan of every leaver. No one but Itachi makes a huge bold statement that they're missing now, they just don't come back. I imagine it'll take ~6 months of not returning to be declared missing (we were gone for more than 2 and no one was suspicious.) And we'll need a few months of officially being missing for it to be believable, I'd say at least 2 or so. And since we don't know when we will need to strike Akatsuki (who knows how quickly they will research the rift), better to be labeled as such on the more conservative amount of time IMO.

So my thinking is we leave and don't return, and are labeled missing about 6 months in. Once the rep sets in we're then free to act whenever we need to do so.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top