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The Princess of Blades (Naruto/Exalted)

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Hmm. Noone else investing in MoSM with me.
Crilltic said:
"Who did it? You never mentioned who you think did it."
<Wants to know who to kill>
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Of the opportunities we've had, this is probably the most appropriate to channel a Virtue channel instead of simply spending a WP.
I suggest Compassion, because dealing with a woman whose boyfriend was just murdered killed.

VOTE
[X]Hinata
[X]NO
--[X]STUNT: Charisma 3 + Presence 0 + Stunt 2 + 1WP for channeling Compassion 3 + upgrade to Appearance 3 mid-convo. Activate Mastery of Small Manners if available.

Somehow, you're less surprised than you thought you'd be.
ANBU are usually portrayed as controlled, implacable agents of the Hokage's will, so it's usually difficult to conceive of them as having human foibles. But sitting across from this intense woman, you find it easy to picture her stalking rooftops on a quest for revenge.

"I don't actually know" you hedge, fiddling with your chopsticks on the table as you pull on your power for something-anything-that might help with this talk. "I included everything I saw and suspected in the report I made, and I'm not confident that I was able to see through any disguise put up by someone capable of killing a special jounin. And I'm under orders not to say more than I've told you."

Looking up, you meet her tired brown eyes with your own.
"If I did know, though, it still wouldn't be right to tell you. Gai-sensei would be disappointed in me if I pointed a grieving comrade at a convenient target."
For a moment a picture of Kin as you saw her on the rooftop flashes through your mind. Focus.
"I would be disappointed in me. And while I didn't know Hayate-san in life, I doubt he'd want you risking your life for this. Nor would your friends. Or teammates. Or bosses."


NOTE
Cha 3 + Presence 0 + Stunt 2 + Compassion 3 is a dice pool of 8.
Yugao seems to be average looking, given Tenten's lack of comment on her looks(and canon portrayal), and that means that Tenten's APP 3 should outweigh her APP 2.
Plus we're targeting her Intimacies towards Konoha, her friends and teammates for circumstantial bonuses on that roll.

NOTE 2
Y'know, if we didn't already have a chakra blade, ending up with Hayate's blade in the event that it was made of chakra metal would have been an interesting plot twist.
 
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[X]Hinata
[X]NO
--[X]STUNT: Charisma 3 + Presence 0 + Stunt 2 + 1WP for channeling Compassion 3 + upgrade to Appearance 3 mid-convo. Activate Mastery of Small Manners if available.

Somehow, you're less surprised than you thought you'd be.
ANBU are usually portrayed as controlled, implacable agents of the Hokage's will, so it's usually difficult to conceive of them as having human foibles. But sitting across from this intense woman, you find it easy to picture her stalking rooftops on a quest for revenge.

"I don't actually know" you hedge, fiddling with your chopsticks on the table as you pull on your power for something-anything-that might help with this talk. "I included everything I saw and suspected in the report I made, and I'm not confident that I was able to see through any disguise put up by someone capable of killing a special jounin. And I'm under orders not to say more than I've told you."

Looking up, you meet her tired brown eyes with your own.
"If I did know, though, it still wouldn't be right to tell you. Gai-sensei would be disappointed in me if I pointed a grieving comrade at a convenient target."
For a moment a picture of Kin as you saw her on the rooftop flashes through your mind. Focus.
"I would be disappointed in me. And while I didn't know Hayate-san in life, I doubt he'd want you risking your life for this. Nor would your friends. Or teammates. Or bosses."
 
Done.

OMAKE: Shadowgames.
Shikamaru lay on his back and stared at the patterns of light and shadow on his blue ceiling.
If he squinted, he could almost believe they were clouds.......

"Shika!"

Some days Shikamaru wondered why he'd bothered winning his match against Kin.
He could have thrown it, of course; while getting perforated by senbon would have been going too far for versimilitude, it wouldn't have taken much to pretend to have been overcome by the Sound kunoichi's genjutsu.

It was a sentiment that was sometime repeated by everyone he knew in the following weeks.

"Why did you bother winning?" asked his mother in exasperation, every time she had to turf him out of bed for early morning calisthenics.
Ino's tales of their encounters in the Forest of Death having convinced her that his general fitness needed work, a conversation with Asuma had put her in charge of bringing him and Ino both up to her standards of physical fitness. Which were...demanding.

"Then why did you bother winning?" questioned his uncle in amusement, standing in for his father at clan training sessions, when he complained about some of the more onerous requirements for improving his Shadow Bind Technique. Couldn't escape it now; he was representing the Nara as well as the village, and his jutsu technique was torn down, examined, and mercilessly honed for speed and efficiency.

Ino, Chouji and a bevy of cousins repeated the refrain in varying tones of commiseration, envy and mockery.
It didn't escape him that they all assumed it was entirely within his power to determine how that fight would end, a fact that would have been flattering if it didn't presage more free time consuming responsibility.

The two people who didn't ever say this were the two men who knew him best.

Asuma-sensei, the smarmy bastard, already had what he wanted: one of his kids in the finals, and really was only concerned with him not embarassing himself, or so he said. He would show up mid-morning and engage Shikamaru in ever-more punishing spars, that left him bruised, sweaty and more familiar with the soil consistency of the Sarutobi clan training grounds than he would like.

These were followed by drills in ever more complex tactical problems, interspersed with surprise genjutsu attacks he swore Asuma had to be getting from Kurenai. At least those usually didn't involve physical exertion.

Shikaku never did, of course, because he already knew, and his son knew he knew.
Pride. The fact that when push came to shove, something inside him rebelled at the idea of losing in front of his peers, his teacher and his peers.
The same character flaw that had pushed an otherwise laidback man to become Jounin Commander.

Maybe if it hadn't been a member of Team Sound. If they hadn't run into Team Sound in the Forest of Death.
If Team Sound hadn't been so utterly, insultingly dismissive that Shika'd spent the next two days off and on plotting how to get around their displayed abilities. If Kin had not been a girl, though that wasn't something he'd admit anywhere it would get back to his mother.

And of course, fate or destiny or the spirits or whoever was in charge had a wicked sense of humor, because no sooner had he beaten one girl than the other guy in his immediate bracket had gotten himself killed, setting him up to fight another girl.
And one with what was rumored to be an entirely unknown bloodline limit of some sort, of which he only knew dribs and drabs.

Troublesome.

"Shika! The medic-nin's here."
"Coming ma!" With a sigh, he levered himself off his bed, and shuffled his way towards the door.
Chuunin had better be worth it.


EDIT
@Crilltic
Note that in canon, Tenten was around when Sakura asked Dosu what Orochimaru wanted with Sasuke. So was the rest of Team Asuma and Team Gai.
The only rookies not aware that Orochimaru is somehow interested in Sasuke or the Chuunin Exams is Team Kurenai.
Chapter 56.

Any and all points into Mastery of Small Manners.
 
[X] uju32

I just want to say, I always thought Yugao was more pretty than average, though I'm basing my memory on anime and not manga. It's just, with the lipstick, and great hair... I dunno. 1010 was a 2 before the upgrade. Cat is fancier even in mask, imo :₽
 
Muer'ci said:
[X] uju32
I just want to say, I always thought Yugao was more pretty than average, though I'm basing my memory on anime and not manga. It's just, with the lipstick, and great hair... I dunno. 1010 was a 2 before the upgrade. Cat is fancier even in mask, imo :₽
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For comparison purposes:
Part 1 Tenten
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Part 1 Yugao
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If Tenten is App 2 at the start of this quest, so is Yugao.
 
uju32 said:
For comparison purposes:
Part 1 Tenten

Part 1 Yugao
If Tenten is App 2 at the start of this quest, so is Yugao.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd say considering Tenten 'average' is wrong according to that picture. It's good that we have 3 whatevers of appearance now. Not that anime style is particularly detailed representation of human face.

In any case, condensing appearance into a single value lacks sufficient resolution to adequately represent it. And that's before we get to the subjective factors of beauty, or lack thereof.
 
uju32 said:
Done.

OMAKE: Shadowgames.
Shikamaru lay on his back and stared at the patterns of light and shadow on his blue ceiling.
If he squinted, he could almost believe they were clouds.......

"Shika!"

Some days Shikamaru wondered why he'd bothered winning his match against Kin.
He could have thrown it, of course; while getting perforated by senbon would have been going too far for versimilitude, it wouldn't have taken much to pretend to have been overcome by the Sound kunoichi's genjutsu.

It was a sentiment that was sometime repeated by everyone he knew in the following weeks.

"Why did you bother winning?" asked his mother in exasperation, every time she had to turf him out of bed for early morning calisthenics.
Ino's tales of their encounters in the Forest of Death having convinced her that his general fitness needed work, a conversation with Asuma had put her in charge of bringing him and Ino both up to her standards of physical fitness. Which were...demanding.

"Then why did you bother winning?" questioned his uncle in amusement, standing in for his father at clan training sessions, when he complained about some of the more onerous requirements for improving his Shadow Bind Technique. Couldn't escape it now; he was representing the Nara as well as the village, and his jutsu technique was torn down, examined, and mercilessly honed for speed and efficiency.

Ino, Chouji and a bevy of cousins repeated the refrain in varying tones of commiseration, envy and mockery.
It didn't escape him that they all assumed it was entirely within his power to determine how that fight would end, a fact that would have been flattering if it didn't presage more free time consuming responsibility.

The two people who didn't ever say this were the two men who knew him best.

Asuma-sensei, the smarmy bastard, already had what he wanted: one of his kids in the finals, and really was only concerned with him not embarassing himself, or so he said. He would show up mid-morning and engage Shikamaru in ever-more punishing spars, that left him bruised, sweaty and more familiar with the soil consistency of the Sarutobi clan training grounds than he would like.

These were followed by drills in ever more complex tactical problems, interspersed with surprise genjutsu attacks he swore Asuma had to be getting from Kurenai. At least those usually didn't involve physical exertion.

Shikaku never did, of course, because he already knew, and his son knew he knew.
Pride. The fact that when push came to shove, something inside him rebelled at the idea of losing in front of his peers, his teacher and his peers.
The same character flaw that had pushed an otherwise laidback man to become Jounin Commander.

Maybe if it hadn't been a member of Team Sound. If they hadn't run into Team Sound in the Forest of Death.
If Team Sound hadn't been so utterly, insultingly dismissive that Shika'd spent the next two days off and on plotting how to get around their displayed abilities. If Kin had not been a girl, though that wasn't something he'd admit anywhere it would get back to his mother.

And of course, fate or destiny or the spirits or whoever was in charge had a wicked sense of humor, because no sooner had he beaten one girl than the other guy in his immediate bracket had gotten himself killed, setting him up to fight another girl.
And one with what was rumored to be an entirely unknown bloodline limit of some sort, of which he only knew dribs and drabs.

Troublesome.

"Shika! The medic-nin's here."
"Coming ma!" With a sigh, he levered himself off his bed, and shuffled his way towards the door.
Chuunin had better be worth it.


EDIT
@Crilltic
Note that in canon, Tenten was around when Sakura asked Dosu what Orochimaru wanted with Sasuke. So was the rest of Team Asuma and Team Gai.
The only rookies not aware that Orochimaru is somehow interested in Sasuke or the Chuunin Exams is Team Kurenai.
Chapter 56.

Any and all points into Mastery of Small Manners.
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Cool. Added to the sheet and put 1 XP into MoSM
lifeofgesture said:
Oh yeah, I should say that my 1 XP goes in Mastery of Small Manners as well.
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Done.
zup said:
I'd say considering Tenten 'average' is wrong according to that picture. It's good that we have 3 whatevers of appearance now. Not that anime style is particularly detailed representation of human face.
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Remember the standards here are the rest of Konoha (which given this is anime they all look like that), and Tenten is never really treated as particularly pretty in the narrative. (She's not treated as unpretty either of course though)
 
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Crilltic said:
Cool. Added to the sheet and put 1 XP into MoSM
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Crilltic said:
Done.
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Dammit.
That still leaves us 2 short on XP.
One more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take the lady that Itachi genjutsu'd into seducing Jiraiya, the use of summoning scrolls in the Chuunin Exams and during Naruto's battle with Pain, and the fact that Suna/Sound brought a strike force into Konoha without detection.
Shake, and you get this.


OMAKE: Opening Moves
Amari Demizu was a respectable businessman.
For twenty-five years he'd plied the routes between Fire Country and the Land of Hot Water, delivering the famous salt from the mines of Hiraizumi to various customers in the Land of Fire. His business had endured and prospered through peace and wartime; even in the worst of times, people had to eat, after all.

It did help that the Hot Water daimyo had managed to adroitly thread the needle of diplomacy between Cloud and Fire, keeping it in both sides interests to keep a demilitarized buffer between their nations.

Amari had never had anything to do with shinobi.
He did not trade directly with Konoha, or any Konoha residents.
Nor had he ever hired shinobi.

Even his caravans only ever had civilian guards; salt was valuable, but it was not easily convertible into cash, and bandits knew better than to mess with stuff like that. Nor did he ever carry cash, taking the hit for the financial security of banking institutions with much better physical security,
A very careful businessman, was our Amari Demizu.

This tale is not about him.

Akiyama was a caravan driver for Amari's trading concern, Amari Trading.
He'd worked for Amari Trading for four years, working his way from loader to assistant driver to being in charge of driving his very own wagon.
A single man, his work ethic and lack of household commitments made him a favorite with his employer for emergency trips and filling in for other drivers.

Akiyama liked the kyabakura.
After every trip to Fire Country and back, he would visit his favorite hostess clubs to drink and flirt with the hostesses before his next trip out.
As a vice, it was and remained pretty low-impact; he was not grabby, and remained

Nine months ago, in one of these clubs he met Mai.
Mai was introduced by the local mamasan as a part-timer, someone who worked in the club when she was in the city, which was seldom.
Akiyama was immediately enamored of her company, promptly becoming one of her regulars who spent time and money to talk to her whenever they were both in town.

Three months ago, she requested a favor; a small enough thing.
Near the end of his next trip, he took a bathroom break to stand on the shores of a Fire Country river, where it wended it's way beside part of their course. And into it's depths he threw an ema with prayers for good luck and success, one which Mai had gotten from an obscure shrine in Grass.

He saw Mai one more time, one in which she informed him that things were looking up for her since he'd delivered the ema
Her family had gotten a position in Grass, and she had the opportunity to tag along and settle somewhere with some stability.

Just another mundane story of missed connections in another mundane person's life.
It was after they parted that things got interesting.

The very female Mai disappeared in the deactivation of a technique, a change of clothes and a removed wig, replaced with some relief by a male jounin who donned his camoflage uniform and hita-ate with some relief.
The clothes and wig were burned.

Without regular reinforcement, the genjutsu of fascination wore off, leaving Akiyama with a lingering sense of loss but no other side effects.

On the riverbed of the Naka River whose course wended it's way through Konoha, and in three other delivery locations roughly ten kilometers from Konoha, four very similar ema absorbed natural energy and waited, chakra beacons across hundreds of kilometres to those with the senses or instruments to detect them.

And in the Village of Sound, testing was completed on a set of massive summoning arrays.



NOTE
This was supposed to answer the question:
How did Sound and Sand both move hundreds or thousands of shinobi cross-country to attack Konoha without anyone noticing?
Advance planning, and some actual use of Orochimaru's abilities as a mad scientist in ninja science other than biology.

The mcguffin is predicated on the fact that the only time we see a long-range summoning of a person by another person(Naruto Clone to Naruto), it involved natural energy.
A little darker than the general tone of this quest, but entirely in theme with Naruto canon itself.

NOTE 2
Ema
Ema (Shinto) - Wikipedia
Kyabakura
Host and hostess clubs - Wikipedia
 
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uju32 said:
Dammit.
That still leaves us 2 short on XP.
One more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take the lady that Itachi genjutsu'd into seducing Jiraiya, the use of summoning scrolls in the Chuunin Exams and during Naruto's battle with Pain, and the fact that Suna/Sound brought a strike force into Konoha without detection.
Shake, and you get this.


OMAKE: Opening Moves
Amari Demizu was a respectable businessman.
For twenty-five years he'd plied the routes between Fire Country and the Land of Hot Water, delivering the famous salt from the mines of Hiraizumi to various customers in the Land of Fire. His business had endured and prospered through peace and wartime; even in the worst of times, people had to eat, after all.

It did help that the Hot Water daimyo had managed to adroitly thread the needle of diplomacy between Cloud and Fire, keeping it in both sides interests to keep a demilitarized buffer between their nations.

Amari had never had anything to do with shinobi.
He did not trade directly with Konoha, or any Konoha residents.
Nor had he ever hired shinobi.

Even his caravans only ever had civilian guards; salt was valuable, but it was not easily convertible into cash, and bandits knew better than to mess with stuff like that. Nor did he ever carry cash, taking the hit for the financial security of banking institutions with much better physical security,
A very careful businessman, was our Amari Demizu.

This tale is not about him.

Akiyama was a caravan driver for Amari's trading concern, Amari Trading.
He'd worked for Amari Trading for four years, working his way from loader to assistant driver to being in charge of driving his very own wagon.
A single man, his work ethic and lack of household commitments made him a favorite with his employer for emergency trips and filling in for other drivers.

Akiyama liked the kyabakura.
After every trip to Fire Country and back, he would visit his favorite hostess clubs to drink and flirt with the hostesses before his next trip out.
As a vice, it was and remained pretty low-impact; he was not grabby, and remained

Nine months ago, in one of these clubs he met Mai.
Mai was introduced by the local mamasan as a part-timer, someone who worked in the club when she was in the city, which was seldom.
Akiyama was immediately enamored of her company, promptly becoming one of her regulars who spent time and money to talk to her whenever they were both in town.

Three months ago, she requested a favor; a small enough thing.
Near the end of his next trip, he took a bathroom break to stand on the shores of a Fire Country river, where it wended it's way beside part of their course. And into it's depths he threw an ema with prayers for good luck and success, one which Mai had gotten from an obscure shrine in Grass.

He saw Mai one more time, one in which she informed him that things were looking up for her since he'd delivered the ema
Her family had gotten a position in Grass, and she had the opportunity to tag along and settle somewhere with some stability.

Just another mundane story of missed connections in another mundane person's life.
It was after they parted that things got interesting.

The very female Mai disappeared in the deactivation of a technique, a change of clothes and a removed wig, replaced with some relief by a male jounin who donned his camoflage uniform and hita-ate with some relief.
The clothes and wig were burned.

Without regular reinforcement, the genjutsu of fascination wore off, leaving Akiyama with a lingering sense of loss but no other side effects.

On the riverbed of the Naka River whose course wended it's way through Konoha, and in three other delivery locations roughly ten kilometers from Konoha, four very similar ema absorbed natural energy and waited, chakra beacons across hundreds of kilometres to those with the senses or instruments to detect them.

And in the Village of Sound, testing was completed on a set of massive summoning arrays.
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Click to shrink...
Unfortunately I can't make this canon because I have plans but it's a good theory I'll have to keep in mind. 1 XP. They've both been bookmarked though.
A little darker than the general tone of this quest, but entirely in theme with Naruto canon itself.
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Well yeah, it will probably get darker later, but for now Tenten doesn't have contact with a lot of the darker elements of the setting, is a Solar and generally lacks psychological trauma or major issues.
 
Crilltic said:
Unfortunately I can't make this canon because I have plans but it's a good theory I'll have to keep in mind. 1 XP. They've both been bookmarked though.
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Neither of them qualified for 2XP?
Dammit.
All in MoSM.

@Gig_Complex
Care to contribute 1XP to the Buy Mastery of Small Manners fund?
Crilltic said:
Suitably creepy! +2XP (though obviously non-canon :V). Fun fact, I was considering doing an Infernal Quest, set after the Chunin Exams with Tenten, though I ultimately decided to go for Solar Tenten out of personal preference.
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You actually forgot to track his XP for the Abyssal Exalt omake, by the way.
 
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