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carionto · 6 months

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This has probably been transcribed before but I don't know what tags to find it under, so imma just do it again cuz this kind of stuff feels very relevant to know, more evidence that Humans are weird as fuck and our brains just make shit up. [Twitter thread by user named foone as a long image I stumbled upon on Pinterest]: _______________________________

You want to know something about how bullshit our brains are? OK, so there's a physical problem with out eyes: We move them in short fast bursts called "saccades", right? very quick, synchronized movements. The only problem is: they go all blurry and useless during this

Having your vision turn into a blurry mess every time you move your eyes is obviously not a good idea, so our brains hide it from us. Now imagine you're an engineer and you have this problem

You've got some obvious solutions you could do.

make the vision go black during movement. (Some VR games do this!)

just keep showing the last thing we saw prior to movement

Both are good options with different downsides, but OH NO. this is assuming everything makes sense and is chronological and (regular) logical.

Your brain does neither of these options, really.

First, it basically puts your visual system on "pause".

You're not seeing blackness or even nothing, you're just not seeing period.

then when you finish your saccade, it shows you what you now see at the new position. and then it pretends it can time travel.

It seriously shows you the image at the new point, but time-shifts it backwards so that it seems like you were seeing it the whole time your eyes were moving.

And because your brain is not a computer with a consistent clock, this shit works.

You can see this effect happen if you watch an analog clock with a second hand.

Look away (with just your eyes, not your head), then look back to the second hand.

It'll seem like it takes longer than a second to move, then resumes moving as normal.

That's because your freaking visual system just lied to you about HOW LONG TIME IS in order to cover up the physical limitations of those chemical camera orbs you have on the front of your face.

We've known about this effect for over 100 years, it's called "Saccadic masking" and more specifically Chronostasis. Your visual system lies to you about WHEN things happen by up to half a second (!) just to avoid saccades blurring everything.

So while I firmly believe we're basically just overgrown biological computers, we're apparently computers programmed by batshit insane drunkards in Visual Basic 5.

And you might think "hey wait, wouldn't my vision 'pausing' for half a second have all kinds of weird effects on moving objects? why don't they appear to stutter when moving?"

and the answer is simple! your brain has EVEN MORE UGLY HACKS on top of this to avoid you seeing that

If you've got a clock where the second hand doesn't "tick" but instead smoothly rotates, you won't see this. Because your brain recognizes it's moving and adjusts what you see to make sure it sees the "right" thing.

It's only really obvious with periodically moving things like a clock hand, because it's not moving (so not triggering the movement-during-chronostasis hack) but it moves at a set rate, so you can notive that rate appearing to change.

It's tempting to think of your eyes and visual system as a camera just dumping a video feed into your conscious brain but taht's so very, very not the case. What you think you see and what your eyes can actually see are two exceptionally different things.

The big obvious one being the blind spot. Vertebrate eyes are wired backwards so we've got a blind spot in each eye where the enrves enter into the eye. About 6 degrees of your vision in each eye is just not there, as there's no light sensitive cells there.

Do you see a blind spot, right now? No, you probably don't. Close one eye! There's now no way for the other eye to fill in the gaps. Still, no blind spot… Your visual system is lying, and making up content it thinks is there. You literally cannot see what you think you see.

Here's another one: You can see in color, right? (well, some of you can't. Sorry) You can see in color all throughout your vision, it's color everywhere?

Well, most of the cone cells (Which are sensitive to color) are in the fovea, a little spot in the center of your vision.

So outside of that center-of-vision spot, you have very little color perception. There's some but it's very limited compared to your main color vision. But I bet if you shift your attention to your peripheral vision right now, it's in color.

Your vision system is lying. It's remembering what colors things are and guessing and filling in the gaps. It's basically doing a Ted Turner colorization process on your non-central vision.

There's even weird effects like what's called "Action-specific perception". If you get a bunch of white balls of various sizes and toss them at people then ask them to estimate the size of the balls thrown at them, they'll have a certain size estimate, right?

Now repeat the experiment but ask them to try to hit the balls back with a bat, and suddenly all the estimates shift larger. They actually see the ball as bigger because they need to hit it. Their vision is exaggerating it to make it easier to see!

Which just goes to show, like I said, your vision is not a camera. Perfect accuracy is not one of its goals. It does not give any shits about "objective reality", that's not important.

What's important to the evolution of the visual system is any trick that helps you survive, no matter how "dumb" or "weird" it is.

So if you want an accurate visual representation of what things look like? Use a camera. Not your eyes.

In any case the original point was that while you might know this about your eyes being poor cameras that lie to you, you might still think that at least they're consistent, time-wise. They don't screw with your sense of time passing, just to make up for visual defects. NOPE!

If you can't get it don in time, turn back the clock and pretend you did. That's a perfectly good solution when you're the visual system.

BTW @/hierarchon reminded me of a neat trick with saccadic masking: go look in a hand mirror. No matter how close you bring it to your eyes, and how much you look around, you will never see your eyes move. You're blind during those movements. But you still think you are seeing.

She additionally pointed out that your phone's selfie-mode is NOT a mirror, and it has a slight delaye, so you can see your eyes moving in it.

And for fun, here's wikipedia's example of the blindspot. Stare at L with only your left eye, adjust the distance, and the R will disappear. You don't see "nothing" or "black", you see the background, because you expect to.

This is why laser damage your retina can be so insidious. Your visual system already can hide "holes" in your vision, what's one more to hid? So you damage a small spot of your retina and your visual system covers it up.

But since you didn't go "WELL THAT WAS TERRIBLE I BETTER TAKE BETTER CARE OF MY EYES" and stop fucking with lasers, you keep doing it. Eventually you accumulate so much damage that your visual system simply cannot manage hiding it all and your vision rapidly degrades.

The other reason lasers are so dangerous is that they don't necessarily trigger the same responses as regular incoherent light. Your pupil reflex is only triggered by some special cells in the center of your eye, so an off-center laser might not cause your iris to contract.

And infrared laser light is just as dangerous as visible laser light, but can't trigger your blink reflex. Your eyes automatically close when exposed to bright light, but they can't detect infrared light. Despite not seeing it, it still causes damage.

Anyway, back on how amazing and crazy your vision is: There was an experiment back in 1890 where someone wore glasses made with mirrors in them to flip their vision. After about 8 days, they could see just fine with them on. Their vision system had started "flipping" the image.

(I say flipping in quotes because it's not as simple as it started showing the pixels at the top row on the bottom row, cause our vision doesn't work like that) It only took them a few hours to get back to normal after taking these glasses off, though.

The last really fun part about this flipping experiment: your eyes already do it. Based on how our vision is wired, we should be seeing everything upside down.

We don't, but only because our visual system has had a whole life to adapt to this.

BTW, since a few people have brought it up: There's a great sci-fi novel by Peter Watts called Blindsight. In it humans encounter an an alien race they call Scramblers, who can move very fast and precisely, and they exploit saccades.

Because if they only move during saccades, we never see them moving. And since so much of our vision is based on just filling in what we think is there, if they stay out of the direct center of our vision, we'll just visually fill them in, like they were never there.

Check it out if you're into hard SF stories of first contact. It's got some really neat ideas about human vision, very unique aliens, the future of humanity in the face of perfect VR, and vampires. (Really, it has "vampires", while still being hard-SF)

BTW, remember how I said "vertebrate eyes" up there? Guess who has eyes which are wired forwards instead of backwards (have no blindspot), have an internal lens, and can even see polarization of light? Our good friends the Cephalopods!

#long reads #long post #not mine #humans are weird #human biology #human brain #the brain lies #human eyes #vision #sight #science is magic #stupid brain #objective reality #apparently our eyes/brain doesn't care about that thing #what a nuisance

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lizalfosrise · 5 months

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ergh my throat feels awful today like a gash scraped into it

#what a nuisance #can i just tear my throat out and replace it with metal already

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caramello-styles · 2 years

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been wearing contacts at home cos my glasses broke lmao

#what a nuisance #thank God I wear contacts occasionally #otherwise I’d be blind 😭😭😭#gonna repair the glasses hopefully tomorrow #but now—#took my contacts off cos my eyes are tired and I guess I’m gonna try to sleep #today has been A DAY #from midnights to 3am version to 20th century girl #and new ep of bad prosecutor #rambles

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deathfavor · 1 year

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i’m working on doing all the pictures for muses and then info (since only 2 are new) but god sekhmet is a MENACE with the pictures

she thinks she’s hilarious

#᛭ — [OOC] angst is the game and tears are the currency #what a nuisance

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asweetprologue · 9 months

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did you guys know that octoroks appear in every zelda title except Twilight Princess

#the BANE of my EXISTENCE #when I started playing the ORIGINAL 1986 GAME and these motherfuckers were ALREADY the biggest nuisance in the game #forget ganon what fucking octopus cursed all of hyrule to a thousand thousand years of death by octorok #zelda #legend of zelda #skyward sword #a link to the past #ocarina of time #link #totk #botw #my art #side note i've decided to start post any fan art I do on this blog instead of my little art side blog because it's just easier for me

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lindwurmkai · 11 months

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Nooooooo looks like Tumblr Live has finally come to Europe 😭

#now i gotta snooze this once a week as well it seems #what a nuisance #tumblr stuff

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suicidecircus · 2 years

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absolutely tired, wish I could sleep, but every time I try to fall asleep lately I just have nocturnal panic attacks and wake up 20 minutes later confused and scared

#what a nuisance #even put on relaxing medieval music and rain sounds but no use

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starcurtain · 2 months

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Woke: Alhaitham sold his grandmother's house and moved into the research center because he didn't like living in an empty home with so many memories.

Also woke: Alhaitham sold his grandmother's house and moved into the research center because it was the last remaining tie he had to Kaveh, and taking ownership of it ensured that Kaveh would have to communicate with him again at least one more time.

#genshin impact #alhaitham #kaveh #haikaveh #kavetham #just sitting here thinking about #the thought process a character like Alhaitham would have to go through #to move out of a familiar and furnished home #to move into a virtually unfurnished research building #with no familiar comforts #and no experience himself in setting up a home #there's no way it was nicer than his previous house #maybe closer to the akademiya #but other than that?#a total nuisance to have to move and rearrange everything in his life #what could have driven him to make such a big change #and did Kaveh’s connection to the research center factor in #I'm thinking very hard okay

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millenari · 10 months

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like every other human being with eyes who's watched cats 98, I always noticed this little split second shot of misto & tugger.

I've seen people theorizing what was going on there, but I never bothered myself because to me it really just looked like the actors not realizing how close they were getting to each other & breaking character momentarily when they did. And the footage was kept in either as a mistake or because someone thought the moment had ~character~.

But I was watching the Cats 98 documentary earlier and I noticed this quick shot which makes that moment actually look like a deliberately directed thing.

Which makes me wonder was the point of it was, it's such a quick and vague little interaction.

#cats the musical #tuggoffelees #if it was just supposed to be tugger being a nuisance and getting in the way on purpose #you'd think he'd come off as more playful #but he looks so serious and misto looks so taken aback #its such a strange little moment i genuinely have no clue what their intent was #cause you know.......................................... looks gay as hell and all.#cats fan on main

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whump-captain · 5 months

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it's a beautiful day in the unethical lab and you are a horrible test subject

#thinkin about lab whump again #and about like. how delicate real science and real experimentation would surely be.#and how little effort it would most likely take to become just an apocalyptic fucking nuisance in an environment like that #kinda want a kintsugi lab chapter au in which ethan is not manipulated into consenting to all the stuff done to him #and instead embraces sabotage #lucy: i can't imagine what horrors he must be enduring in those cruel labs #ethan: i have contaminated all of their control samples #ocposting

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ghouljams · 10 months

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Hi can I pls make a request for our resident nasty boy König? Can we see him and Leibling on a date? She’s vehemently denying it’s a date while he’s just looking at her w heart eyes

Absolutely, absolutely you can. Here's their first date that Liebling insists was not a date.

"Fuck I am starved," You groan, laying your head against the counter. You shouldn't have skipped lunch, but the shop was so busy you didn't have a moment to sit down. König's big hand strokes your head sympathetically, warm and heavy, you pout so he doesn't think you're enjoying it.

"We could get dinner," He says, something silver and hopeful at the edge of his voice. Your hunger encourages you to ignore it. Dinner would be good, you like dinner. König hums like he can hear what you're thinking. He does that sometimes, makes you think he can read your mind.

You try to think of what would be good for him. König doesn't take his hood off, and though you're not sure the reasons behind that, you're not going to ask him to. So, something easy for him. You grumble to yourself, everything you want to eat seems like it would be a hassle for him. His thumb rubs the crease in your brow, easing you to stop scrunching your face.

"What do you want to eat?" You ask him, glancing up past his fingers. His eyes flash with something wild and dangerous before softening, you sort of like that, makes you feel all gooey inside.

"I'm not picky," He pulls his hand away, you almost miss the weight of it. "Let's get Chinese, you want noodles." König goes to turn the lights out in the back as you sit up to grab your keys. Bastard really is reading your mind, how often does he do that?

You get takeout, mostly because König looked nervous standing in the restaurant. You only laughed a little at his panic trying to figure out what to order, and insisted on paying because you're really not sure the fae even have human money. They never buy anything in your store, so you've made some assumptions.

You end up walking back to your flat on pure autopilot, too hungry to think of anything but getting seated and eating as fast as possible. König follows you, of course, which you'd be more concerned about if he didn't already know where you live and regularly follow you home. You should really talk to him about that, he doesn't really have stalker vibes but boundaries are still important. You'll do that later. You hold your door open for him and he freezes.

"Oh," you blink, not sure why you did that.

"Are you inviting me in?" His eyes are so big and hopeful, you feel like you can't say no.

"I guess I am." His hand presses over yours to hold the door as he passes through. You feel a slight pop in your ears, like a plane cabin being pressurized.

König swallows your entryway, impossibly big, an all encompassing presence that you can't take your eyes off of for fear it won't be the same when you look back. It's like he's trying to fill every corner, every speck of your vision, of your home. He smells like the forest after it rains, like wet dirt and decaying wood, like something earthy and primal that you lost when you moved to the city. You blink, and it's just König the same as he always is, staring at you like you hung the moon and every star in the sky.

"This is like a date," He says and you forget everything he just was in favor of your embarrassment. Your cheeks burn, your ears rapidly following them in lighting up red.

"It's not a date." You tell him quickly. He tips his head to the side, eyes smiling and patient.

"It could be."

"It's not."

#fae!konig #what do you want to eat? König: you #I love that he is the nasty boy and not Ghost #König's crimes of being a general nuisance cannot be forgiven #Ghost's crimes of kidnapping are fine cuz he did put her back #konig x you #konig x reader #konig mw2 #konig modern warfare #fae au

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zxal · 11 months

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I feel like this probably goes against the spirit of the meme but i saw the opportunity to draw them and instantly blacked out

#kingdom hearts #kh #kingdom hearts dark road #khdr #xehanort #young xehanort #baldr #xehabaldr #sorry for not drawing anything for weeks and then immediately drawing more xehabaldr. like i can help it.#i dont even know what world this exists in. like a world where baldr doesnt actually do anything but is just sort of an evil nuisance #like a yugioh villain. he's a yugioh villain to me #my art #kh art

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mixelation · 3 months

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oh yeah i also wrote some of the fall out of the chunin exams from minato's pov

the [...] marks an unwritten scene or two lmao

***

Minato looked at the genin’s report first thing in the morning, opening it even before his assistant brought him coffee.

He was surprised it was in Tori’s handwriting and not Itachi’s. Itachi had always been picky about reports (and everything else anyone might do), and Minato often found his notes even on subordinates’ individual reports. Surely Itachi hadn’t told Tori to do the report. But the alternative also seemed strange. Who could convince Itachi not to at least write his own notes?

The format was also non-standard, but Minato didn’t mind it. Tori had somehow condensed the entire mission into a single page, front and back, with important events succinctly outlined in a logical, easy-to-read flow. To this page she’d stapled twenty-seven pages of what seemed to be notes on the conversation they’d had to produce this report, which were more detailed but not in an order that was easy for an outsider to follow.

The contents of the report turned out to be insane.

Minato had talked in length with Kushina about her version of events. He knew the details of the actual exam, their plan and Iwa’s eventual attack. He knew that, somehow, Itachi would end up rescuing Kushina alone while Tori and Deidara had gone after Morino. He knew what Itachi had deemed important for him to know immediately, which was that Tori had elected to make several decisions to manipulate Konoha’s international relations.

He had assumed the way they’d accomplished these things would be wild. He’d somehow underestimated how wild.

For one thing, apparently Deidara had fought the Tsuchikage. This was stated very matter-of-factly in the middle of a paragraph with no particular fanfare, and made Minato choke on his coffee.

There weren’t even any supplementary notes about this fact. Deidara had barged into the Tsuchikage’s box, screamed to a bunch of foreign dignitaries about Iwa kidnapping his sensei while everyone was distracted by the tournament, and then he’d fought the Tsuchikage. That was it. No further comment.

Deidara had also done this with enough skill to then leave the battle site in sufficient chaos that no one had been able to immediately follow him. This at least had detail; Deidara had simply broken enough of the building that the Tsuchikage’s guard he hadn’t killed needed all hands on deck to save their important foreign visitors from its imminent collapse.

Jiraiya had linked Deidara to a lot of destroyed structures– and buildings which were only partially destroyed in very sophisticated, calculated ways– but what the fuck. Deidara was eleven. A team of Iwa demolition experts couldn’t pull that off nearly as cleanly.

Part of Minato’s assumptions had been that Tori and Deidara had stayed together. Tori was extremely clever, and probably much more talented in fuuinjutsu than she let on, but she was very demonstrably not well-skilled in combat, and she’d shut down her own chakra in a last-ditch effort to stave off her own poisoning. That she would stick to a more combat-oriented person in a support role had been her MO as long as Minato had known her.

This, it turned out, was an incorrect assumption to the degree that Minato wasn’t even really sure how Tori had accomplished what she had. She had… simply walked into Iwa T&I, if he was reading this correctly. The report simply said she’d “infiltrated it through the back door.” Her supplemental notes clarified she’d done this via “the super secret jutsu of being twelve and unintimidating.” Then she’d called on a random T&I employee that she described as “looking slightly confused about his job (you know the type)” and convinced him they were meant to be relocating prisoners to help her move Morino.

These… these were not normal infiltration tactics. Minato had no idea what she was talking about.

At least with Itachi, Minato knew he was one of Konoha’s best and brightest. Minato would never order him to infiltrate a place by himself, but he understood how he’d done it with ample abuse of genjutsu and murder. He didn’t understand how Itachi had known where Kushina would be, and this was never commented on, but this question was extremely low priority.

Minato called back in his assistant and asked for a second coffee, and for her to schedule an all-day meeting the next day with Team 4 and some of Konoha’s leadership.

He probably wouldn’t keep everyone there all day. But he wanted everyone available.

The rest of his day was spent in more meetings on the Iwa fiasco. Morino was stable and talking, which pleased him. Tori’s report was copied and passed around to various offices for record-keeping and analysis, to see if anyone could divine Iwa’s motives and goals from their actions.

Shikaku sauntered into his debriefing with Minato with a copy in his hand.

“What the fuck is this?” he said, waving it.

“Team 4 is… resilient under stress?” Minato tried.

“More like Team Disaster,” Shikaku snorted, then dropped into a chair across from Minato.

Minato liked Shikaku. He’d call them work friends, maybe, as much as a Kage and his subordinate could be work friends. Shikaku was several years older and had usually been stationed in different parts of the war from Minato, but their sons were the same age, and Shikaku was always open for commiseration about the joys and challenges of fatherhood. Minato didn’t really get invited to afterwork events, but sometimes when they were both working late, Shikaku would show up with a couple beers and a few moments of friendly chat.

Today Shikaku’s friendly observation was, “Do you think they’re lying?”

Minato stared at him, nonplussed. “About what?”

Shikaku slapped the papers he was holding with the back of his free hand. “All of it. Some of it. It’s pretty unbelievable. A team of our best Jounin couldn’t pull this off.”

Minato frowned down at the original report, laid out on his desk. It did… well, it had occurred to him that some of Tori and Deidara’s parts, which neither Kushina nor Itachi had witnessed personally, might be exaggerated.

“Itachi was with them when Tori wrote the report,” Minato said finally. “He wouldn’t put up with a story he didn’t find believable.”

“He’s a genius, but he’s still only thirteen,” Shikaku said. “I’m not saying it’s likely. I’m saying it’s possible. Both Inoichi and I agree you didn’t do enough to vet those two.”

Minato sighed and leaned back in his seat. They’d been over this. He, too, would have liked to vet Tori and Deidara more and give them a longer probation period, but he’d also needed them for this mission.

“Let’s assume it’s a true and fair report of events for today,” Minato said at length. “I’ll let you and Inoichi grill them to your hearts’ content tomorrow.”

Sikaku raised his eyebrows. “And grill them I will,” he promised. “Fighting the Tsuchikage and his guard in close combat? Being twelve no jutsu? C’mon.”

They moved onto what Minato actually wanted Shikaku to talk about. It was unclear what Iwa’s motive was, or what their plan had been, if any, and for how long they’d been planning it. Their many, many analyses of Iwa’s movements and communications leading up to the chunin exam had borne no major red flags.

Tori’s report had made the astute observation that the window for synthesizing and then implementing the chakra poison before it broke down was quite narrow. Iwa would have had to produce it all during the week prior to the tournament, which meant there was some advanced planning, but they theoretically could have made these plans after Team 4 had arrived.

“They would have had to arrange all the equipment and ingredients too,” Shikaku pointed out. “That would have taken months.”

“Unless they already had it for other reasons,” Minato said. This idea, unfortunately, raised a bunch of other questions about why.

“True,” Shikaku replied. “But they’ve never used it before, and we have no intel on what they might need it for that they couldn’t get some other, less convoluted way.”

Shikaku had also gone through the reports on the exam itself, both the half-page Tori had dedicated to it and Kushina’s sprawling initial report she’d penned while babbling to Minato about how she was okay, she promised.

“There’s at least four places I believe an assassination was attempted,” Shikaku concluded. “Your Team Disaster just… didn’t notice, somehow.”

“Oh,” Minato said. He… also hadn’t noticed.

“The first is during the second phase of the chunin exam,” Shikaku said. “Kushina-san states that Tori was attacked by six other participants.”

“Oh,” Minato repeated, now seeing the problem. This had really been a blip on his radar too; Kushina had not expended an ounce of concern for her weakest student. This detail had only made it into the report as an example of Tori making friends immediately with a Kiri-nin in line for the Seven Swordsmen.

But no, actually, they had split up the Konoha genin and sent them off with inadequate weapons. This would have seemed immediately suspicious and unfair, if only it had slowed any of the genin down remotely.

“If I’m right that they were assassination attempts, the earlier attempts are sloppy,” Shikaku observed. “They might have been less well planned. A rushed decision, maybe.”

“Why?” Minato asked.

Shikaku stared at him meaningfully. “You waltzed one of their pet project kids right in there and said he was yours.”

Well.

“That reason doesn’t explain the poison synthesis,” Minato said finally.

“True,” Shikaku agreed. “It’s not the best theory. But we don’t have a best theory yet.”

The last item they discussed was the one that gave Minato the most anxiety.

“The reason they chose chakra poisoning…” he started. The main reason villages had started trying to stock it during the war was that it was one of the very few ways to reliably take down a jinchuriki.

Shikaku let out a long, tired breath.

“We’ve had no known intelligence breeches on Kushina-san,” he said finally. “My current theory is that because she’s a wildcard and all they really knew was that she has high chakra reserves, they wanted something guaranteed to work. But I have no way to verify this.”

“I get Jiraiya on it,” Minato decided.

The Tsuchikage’s communication on the matter arrived by hawk late in the evening, which was about the fastest turnaround time Minato could have expected.

Minato was, at least, in a decent mood when he received it. Kushina had brought Naruto and a home cooked meal up to the office for dinner, and he’d had a good forty-five minutes of laughter and a good-bye kiss from his wife. Shikaku hadn’t come by with a beer, but Akimichi Chouza’s wife had sent a tin of sweet sticky rice treats up to the other two thirds of Shika-Ino-Cho, also working late on this, and a couple of them had ended up on Minato’s desk.

The Tsuchikage’s letter was brief. He did not mention Kushina at all, offering no apology, explanation, or even acknowledgement his village had done anything to her. Instead, he wrote condolences for Minato’s out of control team and forgiveness for their incredible feats of property damage.

As an act of good faith, we will not request monetary compensation for said damages, only that your team be appropriately disciplined, the Tsuchikage’s secretary had written. We do request an international statement from you, disavowing the heinous and untruthful lies your genin chose to shout at our guests in what we could only assume was a poorly considered prank.

Damages listed all but outright admitted that Deidara had indeed personally attacked the Tsuchikage and then sauntered off largely unharmed. Minato couldn’t help it. He laughed.

What the fuck?

xXx

[...]

xXx

Two things of note happened the following week.

One, the Mizukage sent him a letter, penned by her own hand.

I have heard a terrible rumor, which if true, we in Kiri find most sympathetic, the letter started. Further down the page, she continued, Of course, Kiri must discourage any unnecessary retaliation, especially given… [here, Terumi Mei listed a non-exhaustive list of six different post-war treaties] …but know that should this escalate, Kiri is ready to honor its alliance, if we find this rumor to be true.

Terumi Mei then requested Konoha’s official statement in a tone that Minato would venture to call gossipy, and hinted that she wanted to know if he wanted her to contact the Tsuchikage or not. She’d left a lipstick print next to the Mizukage seal, which… Minato was not going to unpack.

Their alliance with Kiri wasn’t especially strong. Kiri had switched their allegiance from the Konoha-Suna side to Iwa-Kumo midway through the war; they’d only negotiated from a peace agreement up to something more like an “alliance” when Terumi Mei had taken over. Their shinobi still regularly clashed along the border, and all their alliance meant was that Minato and Mei just sort of politely looked away and didn’t escalate. On top of that, one of the post-war agreements, as insisted upon by the leader of Ame who’d strong-armed his way into negotiations last moment, was that no shinobi village could enter into an alliance which would require them to join another village’s declaration of war. In other words, an “alliance” didn’t mean Kiri would fight with them, or even lift a finger for them, should the need come.

But it was probably the most positive letter he’d ever gotten from another Kage.

Kiri’s support was also, notably, not something Oonoki seemed to believe Konoha had achieved in his communications. This was a definite win for them.

Nice job, Tori, Minato thought.

Then he buried his face in his hands at the thought. No. Tori could never find out that had worked the way she’d thought it would, or else she would interpret this as carte blanche to do whatever she wanted.

The second thing that happened threw their entire intelligence department for a loop.

He received a letter, not by hawk, but in the form of an animated, flying paper crane. It landed on his desk and then just sat there while his entire ANBU guard descended upon it. Minato was shuffled out of his office while a total of ten experts verified it was safe to touch.

Eventually, someone unfolded the paper to discover it was a letter.

Ame has uncovered some information you might find interesting, a feminine hand had written. We invite you to visit to talk it over. Attach one of your Hiraishin to this paper and come by whenever you wish.

Under it she’d written:

You may bring whoever you like. Your Team 4 seems interesting, for example.

“There’s no way that’s not a trap,” Shikaku said when Minato read it outloud. “Definitely don’t do that.”

Shikaku was right. No one in their right mind would invite Minato to send in a Hiraishin marker. Still, Minato pouted about it to Kushina in bed.

“No one ever invites me,” he complained. Hiruzen had visited other villages plenty of times. Other Kage regularly got to go show up for Chunin Exams, at the very least. But nooo, everyone politely suggested he just send a representative, because he was the scary guy who’d just plant markers to break in again whenever he wanted and kill everyone or whatever they thought would happen.

“I wouldn’t plant a Hiraishin marker on an ally,” Minato said.

Kushina looked up from her second attempt to get through the most recent Icha Icha.

“Yes, you would,” she said bluntly.

Minato pouted some more.

#reborn au #idk sometimes i write characters processing events before i actually write out what happens because. like.#it helps me categorize what i need to make happen and how it could happen #so the actual details might change and the scene might get cut for redundancy but here u go #also i legit forgot danzo is still around being a nuisance so pretend one of the missing scenes is him showing up to undercut minato #while minato goes: AAAAAAAAAH

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