Chapter 9: Kiyoshi's return.
About a month and a half after the conversation with Haruto-sensei I was practicing when I noticed the signal for the return of the sixth escort group, which was the group that cousin Kiyoshi's unit was assigned to. I was so excited to see him and show him everything I learned, especially after he’d been on patrol for months, even coming back late.
Well, maybe I wouldn't tell him about my mental reinforcement. I’d further improved that to the point where I could now achieve near perfect physical reflex memory, as well as logic processing speed boosts and a semi-accidental skill in memorizing chakra-sensing memories (which I used almost like a budget Sharingan but more limited to the basics than something with hand-signs). Unfortunately I wasn’t yet at the point of having the full suite of enhancements. I wouldn't want Kiyoshi, who was somewhat young and thought himself immortal, to practice mental reinforcement and break himself.
But I'd certainly mention everything else I've learned, and rub in how quickly I was growing.
Tou-san had started me on swords after declaring my speed “acceptable for a new chunin” while reinforced, as well as refining the expert level of water manipulation which I was almost fully through. I could fully shunshin within a quarter second and a half-hand-sign too. Haruto-sensei meanwhile had put me at “three, maybe four years worth of my own chains skill on a good day,” and after a fair bit of focus on my wind manipulation exercises had declared me ready to start in on the mastery exercises, though I still practiced expert level exercises too.
Both Tou-san and Haruto-sensei were focused on the basics of elemental chakra manipulation since I had time to learn and it would make future techniques easier. That said, they had taught the basic Wind/Water bullet and Wind/Water blade. Mostly because the former was a useful technique to practice rapid elemental projection, while the latter was good for shape control.
Kaa-san too was pleased with my progress; I could write basic dimensional seals and had developed second level intuition. She was already teaching me her own warding/area-control specialty and how to write seals with chakra alone. After I learned enough of that, she was planning on passing me off to Hikaru jii-san to continue my education. In all, my skills would have been promising as a fifteen year old. I wasn't yet five.
It was the afternoon, and I was training with Haruto-sensei when I saw it. “Sensei! Look, the sign that Kiyoshi-nii's back.”
“Excellent. I know you won't be able to focus, so why don't we go down and greet him?” I nodded, grinned, and disappeared in a shunshin a moment later, reappearing at the docks. Haruto followed, and we both watched as a small fleet limped into port.
The ships, particularly the escorts, were damaged. One showed extensive burns, another was missing a mast, the third escort appeared fine until it completed a turn and revealed a massive gash through the side. I was somewhat surprised it was even sea-worthy like that.
A number of harbor-patrol water-users went out in smaller boats and shepherded the ships in to dock. Medics rushed on board, some returning at a sprint towards the hospital carrying people on stretchers. I was starting to worry; the ships had obviously met with trouble. But, I told myself, Kiyoshi was strong, and so he should have been alright.
We waited as people began leaving the ship, but didn't see Kiyoshi. Next to us a family was re-united with what I was guessing was their uncle, the mother of the group's brother. Next, he came over to us.
“Daichi-kun?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes, Patrol-sergeant san?” I read from his uniform.
“You probably don't remember me, but Kiyoshi introduced us when we were leaving on patrol. I'm very sorry to tell you this. We were attacked by pirates led by ninja, missing Mist-nins. Kiyoshi fought like an eagle, and saved many lives, but he didn't make it. He was a true hero of Whirlpool. I'm sorry for your loss.”
I was stunned. Haruto's hand tightened on my shoulder, a reassurance. I just… didn't know what to think. For all my personal experiences, I was unfamiliar with others, especially those I cared about dying. I mean, some oldest members of the family had died back on Earth, but that was the natural state of things. Oh, I hated it, the idea of death, but at least they lived full lives.
I'd had a couple close friends in the military who went aviation, which was a dangerous community more from training accidents than enemy action; I'd worried at the time, but both had survived. And because I died young, I didn't have to deal with others that were close to me, or young, or what have you dying. So, I was in shock.
But manners were something that both sets of parents had drilled me in, and that's how I defaulted.
“My thanks for your consideration, Patrol-sergeant san,” I replied shakily with a bow. The man looked a bit sad, clapped me on the shoulder, and left with his family. For that time, maybe a minute, maybe a bit longer, I just stood there, processing. Eventually Haruto broke me out of it.
“Are you alright, Daichi?”
“No, sensei. No, I'm not. I'm sad, and angry. I want to know why this happened,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment, blinking back the tears. “Can you look into reports of attacks by missing-nin, especially from Mist, over the last six months? Also how many ships or patrol groups have gone missing?”
I was still in shock; my mind was working, but the emotional parts of it were almost totally shut down. Honestly, at the time I don't think I was even really aware that I was speaking; I had been blind-drunk once as a university student, and this felt very similar.
“Sure, Daichi. I can do that. What do you want to do now?” he said softly in his deep tone. His voice was calming and familiar, his hand comforting and reassuring; the combination helped break me out of my state a bit more.
“We need to go home. I need to tell Kaa-san.” It was going to be rough. Kiyoshi was in between my parents age and my own. He had a sort of younger-brother relationship with Kaa-san, and an older-brother / cool young uncle relationship with me.
“You know we don't need to go immediately. We could get some food, or go destroy a training ground,” he offered.
I shook my head. As much of a relief as that would be, it wasn’t the right thing to do. “No, Haruto-sensei. If Kiyoshi could die to protect us, it's the least we owe him to tell Kaa-san myself.”
“Alright, Daichi. But you do know this isn't your fault, right?” he asked.
I did, but it still hurt. “Of course not. This is a matter of duty, not guilt.”
And so we left for my home, walking this time as I needed the time to come to grips with this and had no desire for the motion and discombobulation of shunshin at that moment. About a quarter hour later, we were home, and I went into Kaa-san's sealing study.
“Kaa-san,” I started, but suddenly my mouth was dry, my throat shut.
“What is it Daichi?” she turned around, and saw me, and knew (as would any good mother) that something was deeply wrong. “What's wrong Daichi, what happened?”
“It's Kiyoshi. He, *sigh* he didn't make it.”
“Oh no.” And, as I started to cry, she swept over, kneeling, and pulled me into a tight hug. “Oh Daichi, it will be all right. Shh, shh.” And then and there, in my Kaa-san's arms, crying about my dead cousin, I decided I'd do whatever it took to ensure war never came to Uzushio's shores. If only out of a selfish desire to minimize this feeling in the future.
Kirigakure, the aggressive, Bloody Mist, was the only power willing or capable of challenging Uzushio at sea.
Kirigakure was already a dead village. They just didn't know it yet.
I just had to figure out how.
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My training continued over the days, then weeks, then months following Kiyoshi's death. I came up with so many plans, discarding most of them.
First, I thought about guns; I'd thought of them before, but decided not to because it would hurt Uzushio in the end. Then I found out that they weren’t even possible.
The Elemental Countries were actually in some sort of post-apocalyptic world. I didn't know (and never found out) if it was high-energy reality warping physics, or some early jutsu, or alien-space bats, or an alien-space bat jutsu, or a seal, or divine intervention or the vagaries of Chaos and the Warp that caused it. But as a side effect of whatever had destroyed civilization, gunpowder didn't work how it did on Earth.
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In fact, chemical explosions in general did't, even purely chemical flames weren't as effective as I remembered them being. I hadn't been able to get conclusive proof on the mechanism, but it seemed that if something with low chakra potential was burning, it had to create fire-natured chakra too.
This conceptual bond between physics and metaphysics was extremely interesting, especially because it meant that any gun equivalent needed to run on seals or chakra mechanisms. Chakra conductive materials, especially neutrally-conductive metal, were ruinously expensive; only the very elite could be armed with any weapon system that required it. So, seals were the way to go for a gun-system. And Uzushio had an effective monopoly on deploying tactical seals beyond a few basic explosives or lower-rank dimensional sealing scrolls.
The design concept I eventually came up with was something inspired by the space-marine storm bolter. It was a seal on the arm that could launch projectiles or laser bursts or jutsu like plasma bolts. Of those, I actually preferred the laser bursts; there was no reason for it to be visible, and jonin with speed specialties were sometimes able to dodge or block the bullets.
Plus, lasers didn't make noise that gives away location. Lasers weren't actually that difficult to make using seals either, were relatively low energy cost for their effect, and were more restricted by peoples' lack of scientific knowledge than anything else. Secondary firing modes could easily blind or signal. The seal on the arm linked to a HUD seal that projected onto the eye; it relayed where the user was aiming, how much energy was being put into each shot, firing mode, and remaining energy reserves.
Overall, this was a design I could accomplish by the time I'd achieved level 4 intuition, which I estimated was likely to be achieved sometime close to my fifth birthday. The design was somewhat complicated, but relatively simple compared to most body-seals, to the point that sealing adepts could install them with a medic available in case of any emergency (most Uzumaki Combat Body-Seals, especially those that link into the chakra network, need a sealing expert or even master, as well as a full doctor to be done safely).
I estimated that with the expected complexity, enough could be produced for all chunin equivalents and above, and with a serious push, enough could be made for the genin as well. With this seal, genin should have a decent chance against chunin, and chunin should be relatively sure of killing other chunin. Jonin would still be a major threat since they tended to have a lot of tricks, stealth and adaptability. Still, survivability of Uzushio forces would substantially increase, especially in the first days of war before enemy countermeasures and intelligence caught up with the threat. But while an excellent seal, and one that I fully planned on developing, it wasn’t enough to make Uzushio impossible to invade.
Second, I thought about air-support, partially inspired by looking at Kazuo-sama's gift of a pair of flying Osprey while lying in bed. Air-support excelled at recon, strategic strikes and tactical support as well as communications and transportation. It was totally different from what the Elemental Countries expected too; after the fall of the Sky village close to the founding of the Five Great Villages decades ago there had been no significant aerial assets. Even better, seals allowed for super-efficient aircraft, since fuel and payload took up no space or weight.
I was planning a set of three general UAVs or drones, and two special purpose ones.
The largest, which I was calling the Osprey after the premier summons of the village, was planned to be optimized for long deploy-times with station-keeping, a higher ceiling and longer range sensors and some powerful munitions. It would mostly be deployed over fixed installations or as a strategic asset by force-commanders. It would also be able to deploy a stealth-ed summoning circle to teleport in troops.
The middle sized model, which I was calling the Sea-hawk after another, slightly less powerful summons, was planned to fill the tactical mission profile. It would have a decent range, strong mid-ranged sensors, and be designed mostly for anti-personnel combat with machine-gun, laser, and rocket equivalents, as well as optional seals for heavier anti-field-fortification munitions.
The smallest, which I was calling the Peregrine, after another bird summons in the village, would be designed for more covert and close support missions. The least armed, I planed for the Peregrine to only have lasers and rockets, but upgraded with basic stealth and hover capacity, as well as the ability to fold the wings in and grip onto trees or other solid structures and act as a turret.
The two special purpose drones would be for underground and underwater combat respectively. The Mole, designed for underground combat, would have a special transportation seal to temporarily seal dirt, then move forward, then unseal the dirt behind it. The mole would be designed to send out seismic shocks and interpret the readings, as well as look for enemy chakra, and release targeted burrower-missiles to detonate the enemy, or use a limited seismic jutsu recreated via seals to crush them.
Similarly the Swordfish, designed for underwater combat, would similarly search for enemy ninja, though could also launch their seeker-torpedoes at ships. Unlike the fliers, the special purpose drones were designed to be somewhat permanent, though could be recalled to refill chakra reserves.
Overall, these drones would massively improve Uzushio's defensibility, assuming I could actually make them – I hadn’t quite figured out that part yet. Many of the functions I wanted required 5th level seals; some, especially the communications net that I wanted and some of the sensors, required 6th level seals. Further, each drone would be far more complicated than the hand-laser and HUD seals.
If I wanted to achieve this, I'd likely have to settle for just the Sea-Hawk to start, and still enlist the aid of Hikaru jii-san and some of the other masters. That said, it was a cool project and they'd likely be interested; everyone loves toys that fly, after all.
Creating enough drones to be widely deployed, and keeping them safe from being stolen or copied, was something of a challenge. Assuming I got higher level sealer support, an automated seal-creator and significant security upgrades were not unreasonable expectations though. With sufficient drones deployed throughout the force, Whirlpool and Uzushio would effectively be impossible to invade or destroy in a conventional fashion; I fully planned on completing at least the Sea-Hawk if I had the time to do so.
The problem was that I had thought of the laser and the drones before Kiyoshi's death. While excellent in defense, it would still be far too costly to use these to destroy Kirigakure, not to mention that I wanted to do so without anyone else knowing; Uzushio hardly needed the kind of heat that that would bring.
And I was adamant on the necessity of Kirigakure's destruction; Haruto's investigation had shown a sharp uptick of Mist “missing-nin” attacks, though reports from other friendly Daimyos did not report heightened levels of Mist missing-nin activity along their coastline or otherwise. Clearly it was a black-flag operation, and the Mist would keep looking for ways to destroy us until one or the other were destroyed.
No, I decided, regular weapons were not the way to go. I had been thinking too small; instead of a weapon, I need a Weapon of Mass Destruction. And so, a week after Kiyoshi's ship returned without him, I began to come up with possibilities.
The first idea that I had was a seal-driven nuclear bomb. It was something I was familiar with, and as seals allow conversion of lots of different types of energy, I thought it might be achievable. It turned out, seals made nuclear explosions absolutely impossible. The problem was that a seal converts things through chakra, and it was unfortunately the case that through chakra, while matter still has a lot of energy, it wasn’t enough to be making a WMD out of.
The Creation of All and I guess the reverse, the Destruction of All, were possibilities allowed by upper level seals, but were also too expensive in chakra to make any kind of chain reaction. And there was no way I could manage to duplicate an entire nuclear program on my own, even with seals to help with containment and such. I simply didn’t have the time, or even the theoretical background.
The second possibility that I thought of was massively scaled-up conventional chakra bombs, maybe ones similar to my Spider's Seal. It turns out that that would basically require heavy carpet-bombing. It would definitely be traced back, and at a guess likely cause no more than forty percent casualties, primarily in the weaker ranks and civilians.
I immediately discarded the third and fourth possibilities: chemical or biological warfare. Chemical weapons were less effective as they weren't infused with the chemical's natural chakra; that was an extremely chakra-intensive concept. Further, I really didn't want to introduce chemical warfare to the Elemental Nations, and had no easy way of getting the chemicals I'd need in the proper scale. Biological WMDs are always, always, always a horrible idea. They would inevitably backfire, either when new bioweapons are used in a retaliation, or as the disease infected everyone, mutating and spreading beyond control. So, just, no.
The fifth idea I had, based on the chemical weapon idea, was a poor-man's Alchemical Bomb. I'd either concentrate oxygen by creating a partial gas boundary, or concentrate nitrogen. In the first case, I'd immolate the village; in the second, I'd wait for them to suffocate. While I marked this down as a possibility, the odds that someone would notice made me wary; even a Kirigakure sealer can break something with sufficient power, or evacuate the village. The odds were far too low that it would work.
It was while I was wishing that I could make a Bond-villain super-laser work as easily as villains seemed to in the movies when I thought of my sixth idea: Rods from God, or God's Hammer as I'd seen it referred to in a fiction whose title I'd long since forgotten. More technically, Orbital Kinetic Energy Weapons, or Kinetic Orbital Strikes.
Basically, large rods, preferably made of Tungsten, though seal-enhanced iron and stone would do at a pinch, launched from orbit. If I remembered right from when I read about this sort of thing way back when, I'd manage to get a speed in excess of Mach ten, and a blast damage equivalent to somewhere between ten and a hundred tons of TNT. That could be fatal to even stronger ninja out at five hundred feet, and destroy even reinforced buildings at one hundred feet distance.
A look at a map of Kirigakure, much of it blank due to being in a security restricted area, and I calculated that a spread of twenty five rods would be sufficient to get, at a guess, eighty percent destruction given the generally wooden construction in the ninja-populated region of their village. Another five rods for their Kage's seat of government, one for their central records facility, one each for a trio of barracks, one for the academy and a pair for the docks and shipyards and Kirigakure would be completely unable to wage war.
I had a winner.
As far as seals-based WMDs went, KOS (Kinetic Orbital Strike) was almost embarrassingly easy. If I were being particularly cunning and kludge-y, I could have probably done it with level three seals. Less kludge-y, level four. To penetrate the village anti-kinetic shields (which every village had, probably for things like this), and do so with a bit of elegance and real time visual feeds, I would need level five seals, and about four months of my total chakra output. Call it a year of my spare output.
That was it. Level five seals and a year's chakra to obliterate one of the great villages.
I had my goal, I had my method. All that was left was the execution.