audio test jdv

by Hankton

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1. c 1-1

Chapter 1: Death and Satori

What follows is an account of how I came to pass, and the origin of some talents I possess. For those uninterested, you may skip on.

Dying is a horrible experience, and dying slowly is worse. I was neither young nor old when it came, and it was no surprise. I had an inoperable brain tumor, a slow but inevitable death sentence hanging over my head from a fairly young age. I didn't accept it, of course. It was my dream, my ambition to live forever; not out of fear of death, but love of life.

Life is just so interesting. There is so much to experience. And people are always creating new and interesting things to continue experiencing. Whenever I would read of immortals (all too often those damned vampires common in pulp teen novels) who lamented their ability to live forever, to keep experiencing new and interesting things, I would always think then you have never truly lived in the first place.

I had a fairly excellent life: a loving family, with two siblings and dogs, enough money for whatever luxuries or hobbies we really wanted, well traveled, and the winner of a genetic lottery that left me both physically fit and with an intelligence great enough to pursue whatever I wanted. And from a young age, that pursuit was magic.

Lacking magic on Earth though, I settled for martial arts, science, and stories.

I suppose part of my thoughts on immortality may be because of my interests: technology and stories and martial arts at the forefront, followed by a general love of information, the human condition, history and what shaped it. All of these things I adore. And all of these things are in constant flux, constant development. As a child of the new millennium, I knew these things would always be there for me; I could, and wanted to, search for perfection for a thousand years, and a thousand more in these things, and still there would be more to learn and improve. I had no need for a heaven, as I saw its potential on Earth.

My love of technology led me to authors like Kurzweil, who gave me the idea that an immortal life is not just possible at some distant point in the future, but potentially possible for those of my generation. I did all the right things. I slept right, ate an organic diet high in vegetables and low in red meat (generally unhealthy) and fish (some is ok, but many have heavy metals), took the perfect balance of vitamins and minerals and supplements, didn't drink or smoke. I meditated and practiced martial arts, partially out of preference and partially for health. I practiced a low-risk lifestyle as well; over an eternity, small risks add up, and I wanted to go into things with the right habits.

So, for me who loved life, for me who made a temple of my body, for me who loved above all else my mind, a slow progressive brain death was horrifying. I had several bouts of active tumor growth before it would slow or stop, losing mental ability and physical control each time. Each time, I clawed my way back, practicing meditation to regain focus, kata to regain strength, basic math and word games with family and friends to regain cognitive function; my efforts paid off, and I kept falling into an extremely rare number of people capable of recovering from such incidences.

And, though this crucible damaged my body, there were benefits for my soul. Before any of this, I had always been a bit aloof. Not because I disdained others, but because it was very difficult to empathize on anything other than an academic fashion. I didn't understand why someone might need a calculator to give the square root of any number less than a thousand (well, at least to three sig figs), or why others would miss things that were perfectly obvious if they just looked at the problem correctly. I knew I was physically capable in most scenarios, and mentally capable in any where I understood the underlying concepts. Further, I was somewhat divorced from my emotions. I had them, cherished them, but also refused to allow them any control. And so, I came off as somewhat arrogant, and at times condescending.

The illness changed that, to a greater extent. My mind and physical control shot to hell, my emotions highly variable, my feelings intense in a way they had not been before, I went through all the stages of childhood development all over again on my way to improve myself to what I considered an acceptable standard. I understood others far better. And, most important, my meditation yielded some very interesting results.

I had been interested in hypnosis and meditation from a young age. Here was a type of magic that did not use magic. I meditated, of course, for martial arts. Hypnosis, NLP, and other such topic I found somewhat fascinating, and I would pour over the works of people like Derren Brown, reading and watching the analysis posts of others online, going so far as to practice some basic tricks on other students at school. I myself practiced a combination of meditation and self-hypnosis following some training-related spine injuries as a pain reduction technique as I abhorred the concept of pain killers unless absolutely necessary.

The levels of meditation needed to deal with something like brain damage though, that forced me onto a different level.

I spent several hours, every day, meditating to keep control of my body and mind. When my reaction to crowds decreased sufficiently for me to be out in public, I used walking-meditation techniques to deal with the influx of new information. It was during the onset of this whole mess, several months in, that I first experienced Kensho, a fleeting momentary glimpse of self, the very first step towards enlightenment. It was, to be honest, somewhat addicting, terrifying, humbling, and exalting.

I was hooked, and tried for months to recreate the feeling; it would not come. The very act of trying to achieve it, having in mind as a possibility while meditating, made it impossible; I would not find it again until years later. Irritated, I turned to other, similar pursuits, mostly focused on the intersection of meditation and self-hypnosis.

Hypnotists in the past could have ordinary people stiffen their muscles so hard that they could be suspended across two chairs, feet on one, hands on the other, and walked across. This is not some lost secret either; merely, it turns out that after being brought out of the hypnotic state, the subject tends to have muscle damage, ranging from mild to severe, and possible joint and tendon damage as well. Houdini was supposed to use a similar technique on his own stomach muscles to resist the blows of even heavyweight boxers.

Interested, and having made my own initial forays into sustained meditation, self-hypnosis for pain reduction, and ki type manipulation (a combination of meditation and self-hypnosis, I believed), I began to practice. Eventually, I was able to surpass my own limitations. At first, I was able to focus, and punch fast enough that the speed was slightly painful to my body, even with my well-conditioned and flexible muscles and joints. Eventually, while working out with a friend of mine who was on leave from the US Marine Corps (and who had a perfect 100% on his physical fitness test), I used these techniques to keep up at least somewhat with my own much nerdier physique; I ended up with so many micro-tears in my arms, I was unable to move them for nearly a month. I was lucky I didn't injure myself more severely.

Somewhat less focused on these techniques after my brush with causing lasting physical damage to myself, I continued practice on and off, more maintaining my potential than increasing my talents, focused on my job as a researcher. At one point, I decided to try a deep meditation again; I fasted three days, meditating all the while. On the third day, once again, I achieved a brief moment of Kensho. This time, that was enough, and I went back to my work and life revitalized. Eventually though, all good things came to an end; I had a vicious resurgence of my illness.

This time, the damned thing would not stop. I was given a month to live. I quit work, moved home, spent some time with my family, came up with a perfect diet with Mom, and began to meditate like never before. At first, I would spend eight hours a day in meditation, another four on martial arts. As time progressed, and that first month came to a close, I was cleaner in mind and body than I had ever been before, and meditating close to 16 hours a day. The new MRI showed a much slower progression than feared, but that I was still getting worse.

A second month passed. I had achieved Kensho another two times. I was conscious enough of my body to know I was still getting worse, as was verified by the doctors. Near the beginning of the third month, I achieved Kensho once more, and in that moment of clarity I knew, this body of mine was doomed.

But, in that moment of clarity, I had a thought; I saw a possibility. Normally, the mind, the body, the spirit, are linked but somewhat separate. I saw the possibility though of changing that. While I may not be able to live forever, I was maintaining my mind, my self, through sheer focus and will at this point. With some more focus, some more will, I might be able to change things, to link mind so that it depends solely on spirit. And so, achieve a kind of immortality in reincarnation.

This was a gamble; I was wise enough even then to know I may be practicing self delusion, that this may all be a product of self-hypnosis rather than an actual, spiritual enlightenment. Further, I was gambling on reincarnation, and that my own enlightenment would be enough.

Though, let me make clear: I was not interested in Buddha-hood. I had no desire to transcend humanity entirely until I was finished experiencing what it had to offer. Nor was I arrogant enough to think I could achieve it, certainly not in the moments I had left to me. I had no desire for the final enlightenment of Daigo, but needed the persistent insight I thought of as Satori rather than a mere moment from Kensho. And so I prepared. In a symbolic step-back from the flesh, I went entirely vegan.

By the end of the third month, I was close. Close to the unison-of-mind-and-spirit. Closer to death. There was no point in an MRI, not for me, though I agreed that the doctors could have my body once the heart stopped beating. I made my goodbyes. I went into my meditation room, an empty, white walled space with wood floor attached to a restroom, bringing fourteen pitchers of water and a glass.

I sat, and meditated, and drank water when I felt it necessary. The moments of Kensho became somewhat less impactful, but more and more common, the distance between me and Satori vanishingly thin. I lost track of time, was only drinking now what I perspired, my body devoid of toxins, my mind and spirit the same.

I felt that I could abandon self, that I could become one with the world. But that was not my goal. Instead, drawing on everything I knew and had practiced, I reinforced it. My Mind, My Spirit, My Self. This was my mantra. I experienced the world, but I was not the world. Not yet. One day, perhaps. But for that moment, my mind was my spirit, and my spirit my mind. To be honest, I am not sure if this revelation, this Satori of insight on how to maintain identity through death, came while I was alive, or dying, or only just dead.

I vaguely remember the experience of something trying to take that-which-was-dark, and when I held on to my darkness, to take me, but I refused. I was not dark, though I possessed darkness, and thus that-which-consumes-the-dark may not consume me. Something tried to take that-which-was-light; again, I refused to surrender my light, and was not light myself.

There was the potential to become-that-which-you-may-be, but my self was that of a human, which I already was; I had no need to become what I already was. And, lastly, there was the call-to-be-at-peace-with-all.

This, I remember most. Perhaps, it was the strongest call, especially for me, who had struggled so long. Perhaps, it was the weakest call, especially for me, who had spent so many hours of meditation, fighting this peace to make my mind part of the identity of my spirit.

Then, for an age, there was merely nothing, the rare sensation of movement, perhaps a faintly heard noise. After, I believe this to have been the womb, with my spirit entered into my new body. At the time, especially at first, I was somewhat freaked out, worried that I had resisted the possible avenues of death and thus been consigned to the void. But my illness had not broken me, and death had not broken me, so neither, I resolved, would this new void. I continued my meditations, continued reviewing my memories of my past and making dreams for the future.

The experiences of the dead, and the spirits, and the different-from-human, are not part of the human experience, and thus are lost to one that holds onto humanity. I remember those poorly, though there are some fleeting concepts I still held onto, as I have related. Their validity, how they might be psychic constructs to make sense of a greater experience, or merely the last gasp of a dying mind, all these are things I did not and do not know. Nor are human minds and spirits, which I had focused so dearly on maintaining, meant to function well without a body to provide the processing of thoughts. I can only report on fragmented memories, and how I have reconstructed them.

All I know, is that my efforts worked.

I maintained my mind and self as part of my spirit.

I avoided the Paths of the Dead.

As I lived, I would live again.

And so it was.

Chapter 2: A New Life, and New Challenges

Being conscious as a fetus, and especially during birth, was not an experience I am fond of remembering. I do not advise it, and will speak not much more of it than to say that it was months of tedium, through which I struggled mightily to maintain my mind. As one may imagine, I spent much of this time in meditation, going over my previous life. I was not fully conscious of the fact that I was alive again until after the birthing process, an explosion of noise and light and sensation and pain.

Being a baby was itself confusing. To begin, babies are functionally blind. Their brains do not yet know which nerves control which motions. Their muscles are further too weak to do anything but turn their head.

It took me days, perhaps weeks to realize what was going on, weeks more to have any sort of controlled motion, months to build the muscles necessary to crawl, further weeks to have the balance to stand and walk. As a baby, emotions and body are unstable; think puberty but a hundred times more intense, and then remember that the baby brain is forming and developing too. It was far too similar to my illness for my tastes, and I wanted it over with as soon as possible.

Luckily, I was male. I wouldn't want to deal with gender confusion on top of everything else. Soon enough I learned my name: Daichi, or great wisdom. My parents picked well.

During this time, I had four other focuses beyond existing and experiencing infant-hood. The first was learning the language, which sounded similar to Japanese; though as I did not speak Japanese, I could not tell how linguistically similar they were. I would by carried about by 'Kaa-san much of the time, and whenever I wasn't obsessed with playing with her red hair (surprisingly distracting for a child), I would point and squawk at objects as we passed, getting her to name them. I endeavored to learn the language as quickly as possible. Eventually, I learned my parents' names: Kohaku was Tou-san's name, Kohaku Uzumaki. He was named after amber for his hair color, which apparently as a kid was more orange than red. Kaa-san's name was Tomomi.

The second focus was on my mind. A developing brain is a very interesting thing. Depending on how you focus your time and effort, combined with natural inclination, neural-plasticity leads to the formation of specialized thought capacity. Having babies, and even young children, do a lot of math, for example, will make them more likely to be good at it, especially faster at it, so long as they associate the math with good things. I was, of course, focused on making my brain as sharp as it could be; my identity, the essence of my mind and self, may have been linked to the soul, but the processing speed and power was definitely at least partially physical.

The third focus was on my spirit. I wanted to make sure that I did the necessary maintenance keeping mind and spirit linked. Infant mortality, especially in this relatively low-tech world I seemed to have found myself in, was definitely a thing, and I want to ensure that if the worst happened, I would once again be reborn in my full capacity. During this, and the associated meditations on my body, I found something interesting.

And this interesting thing leads into the fourth focus; my internal energy. I discovered that my ki there in that new land was much more real than in my previous life. On Earth, it was, at least as I thought, a way of envisioning and having a semi-conscious control over normal biological processes. On Chakyu, my new planet, it was the same, except there was this greater energy to it, and it was far easier to move and use.

After some months of focus, I realized this energy had its own circulatory system, and seemed to have a color to it too: a dark blue in the pool near my navel, the traditional seat of physical energies (ki), a pale silver in the well near my forehead, presumably my mental/spiritual energies (chi), and a rather nice sky blue near my heart where they mixed (chakra).

This gave me ideas. Back before, I had read a number of stories with chakra-based magic systems, including Naruto. I hypothesized that in such a system, there would be five important attributes to someone's chakra: how much chakra you have (volume), how potent your chakra is (density), how quickly you can release the chakra (flow), how finely you can manipulate the chakra (control), and how quickly it recharged (vitality). While all of these are somewhat inherent, all can also be trained like muscles, especially if the chakra system has a circulatory system attached. And so, I began my chakra control exercises.

The main exercises I focused on were internal techniques effective in increasing volume, density, control, internal flow, and vitality. The small points on my skin where chakra could escape kind of freaked me out, and I decided not to experiment with those without a bit of advice and more knowledge. What I could do, was the following.

First, I spent days meditating solely on my own chakra flows. Once I had a decent understanding, the next step was the first of the exercises. I would compress my internal chakra, making it denser, then form it into little balls that were slightly larger than the channels, increasing volume a bit, as well as control, and significantly increasing flow. I would then focus on moving these balls through my chakra system as quickly as possible while maintaining coherency, further improving flow and control. Vitality would come into it as my body would have to replace the low-density areas left behind by increasing my chakra density. As a second exercise, I would focus on making the chakra in my ki-pool and chi-well denser, then shaping it against the sides of the pool or well, and making it slightly larger. This was most effective in increasing density and volume.

My third chakra related exercise was to try and track my own chakra as some naturally flowed outside of my body, and do minor control exercises, like keeping it close. This led me to noticing other sources of chakra nearby, and my fourth chakra exercises. At first, I could only notice them if enough of my own chakra came into contact and was absorbed by the chakra of the object or person I was sensing, which made me lose control of the chakra that used to be mine; eventually, I noticed familiar chakra sources like my parents, then even later, unfamiliar chakra sources within range, whether they had any of my chakra in them or not. I would meditate on this daily, training to expand my range and refine my focus, while also trying to multitask on whatever it was I was doing normally.

This in turn led to my fourth exercise, where I would try to re-absorb my own chakra, and the chakra of others. I found that my own could be reabsorbed safely, but that others had to be mixed with my own chakra, at which point it would be infected by my chakra's essence, for lack of a better term, and made available to my control. When alone, I would purposefully leak chakra out, keep it close, wait till my system was full again, then re-absorb it, increasing my volume and density, and improving my external chakra control.

As a baby, with little to do other than focus on learning 'Kaa-san and Tou-san's language, doing memory and math game in my head to improve my mind, and a bit of meditation on my spirit, I had plenty of time when I was "sleeping" to muck about with these exercises. Though I didn't know it at the time, they would provide an excellent base to build the type of skills I'd need to survive.

I was about one year old when I discovered that I was living in a Naruto-verse, and more importantly in Uzushiogakure as an Uzumaki. I nearly wept I was so happy I had started my training early enough. It turns out, 'Kaa-san and Tou-san's red hair? The weird spiral symbol I'd sometimes see? All of these were signs that didn't really click until I was better with the language.

I wasn't sure how to feel about this.

I wasn't particularly familiar with Naruto, more's the pity. I had read a good number of fanfics, but the original was far too annoying to get into. I didn't know much, and had no guarantee that we were in fact in a canon Naruto-verse, nor whether a canon verse is reflective of the majority of possible Naruto-verses.

In other words, the multi-versal identity was certainly uncertain.

Less philosophically, I had no idea where the canon of Naruto fell in relation to reality. Was it truly historical, or at least a semi-child friendly depiction of true events? Was it fiction from the same setting, similar to Jiraiya's Tale of the Utter Gutsy Shinobi? Or was it even less relevant? In other words, I didn't know whether I had a cheat sheet, a loose guide, or whether I was about to do something as stupid as thinking that reading Shakespeare's Macbeth qualified me as an expert on the War of the Roses.

I decided to work off of the assumption that I was in canon, or at least something closely related, until I knew better.

That aside, I was in Uzushio, which I knew fell in canon, but I didn't know when, my best guess being "sometime after Mito requests a replacement to hold the nine-tails", nor could I locate myself in time. Further, I was well familiar with the butterfly effect, so assuming I was not in a static time-stream, in which case [everything I do] is something [I will have done in the canonical future] so I may as well [do as I would and hope for the best] – and yes, I did study modern philosophy in school – then the butterfly effect meant that this far out, nothing was certain of the absolute shit-storm that may be coming. On the other hand, considering it was the result of a centuries old conspiracy, and I was basically living in a death-world, I decided I should definitely prepare as well as I could.

Still, if there was a clan to be part of, the Uzumaki's were among the top choices. Maybe without the cheating eyes of the Uchiha or all-seeing Hyuga (both of whose capabilities I resolved to copy or duplicate at some point), but we didn't have the whole Hatred or Servitude fetishes either. Plus canonically, until it got destroyed, Uzushio was as far as I could recall a pretty good place to be. Bonuses included high levels of prosperity and technology, a virtual monopoly on high-level sealing, defensible and somewhat removed from the concerns of the mainland other than our, somewhat unfortunate, military alliance with Konoha. And, most critical for me, access to the sealing libraries of Uzushio, peerless repositories of a discipline which was interpreted back on Earth as a mix of magic, science and art.

As soon as I found this out, I forced my parents to start teaching me how to draw. I sucked. I was a baby, so it was expected. But, I brought a level of focus to it that impressed my parents. Turns out, Kaa-san was a fairly decently ranked sealer, and was ecstatic to start teaching me, calling me "her little genius" at the speed I learned the meaning of symbols and making Tou-san extremely jealous. Honestly, Kaa-san was pretty amazing.

I always thought of her as this huge (compared to me), but svelte and reasonably fit and just the right height (compared to Tou-san, who was kind of a beast, and always has 5-o'clock shadow), always dressed well, and gentle person who spent a lot of time writing in the office, but always with time to change or feed or play with me whenever I fussed, and infinite patience to point out and explain things in simple terms that I would hopefully understand. I took a while before I realized exactly what she was writing while in her office, to learn that she was this world's equivalent to, I'm not sure: a journeyman enchanter? A math-mancer or Pythagorean mage? A scientist? And at such a young age too. My eyes were full of admiration for Kaa-san.

Tou-san, who was part of the clan-guard (which was somewhere between ninja and national-guard), seemed to have focused a bit more on kenjutsu and physical combat, which I guessed from his rather manly appearance, sword, and callouses; I was just hoping he could teach jutsu too. Being a bit competitive with Kaa-san, he started me off on a proper physical training regime, getting me ready for martial arts and swordplay with a series of exercises, stretches and games which I took to amazingly well.

It was a wet, muddy, cold, painful, and exhausting process. I loved it. It had been literally a lifetime since my body was fit enough to do so, and I had seriously missed being able to feel that burn and the sweet exhaustion of an honest work-out. Tou-san pushed just the right amount, and always made sure to explain how this game or exercise wasn't only great in its own way, but would make me an awesome man in the future. It wasn't hard to convince me. Being able to do what really amounted to martial-arts magic, and protect those we loved like Kaa-san and Uzushiogakure meant I was living the dream.

I theorized that chakra, which I had been improving at a rapid rate for over a year by that point, improved muscular and mental development too, because there was no way a one year old should be able to survive all that otherwise. And so my days passed, eating with Tou-san and Kaa-san, increasing my vocabulary, being taught to read and write by memorizing the meanings and usage of seals with Kaa-san in her office during the day, running and playing hide-and-seek, and doing basic exercises and pre-martial arts foundational work with Tou-san either early or late depending on his shift.

As I grew, and gained mobility, basic speech, the ability to eat solid foods, was finally a bit more sturdy, and had passed the all important first-year, where child mortality was so brutal, I was finally exposed to more of the village. It was a beautiful place. Relatively large, with a population in the tens of thousands, about a tenth of whom would fall under the broad umbrella of "ninja" (in reality often samurai or simply chakra-active with potential combat-applicable skills), Uzushio was also a trading hub, and made a fortune on selling seals and sealing services.

The buildings, mostly Japanese in style but with much more stone and solid materials than usual, tended to be bright and colorful. Clothes were made of fine fabrics and vibrant colors. The market had large supplies of local and foreign foodstuffs and goods. The people were pleasant, and my family well respected. We were not the very elite expected to inherit clan leadership, but were Uzumaki clan members, both of my parents being approximately Jonin within their specialties and thus of similar social position as a great-clan special Jonin in another village.

I loved life, as always, and I loved my new life too. I decide that I refused to allow it to be ruined by anyone. I would put forth my full effort, the understanding of science and technology of a highly-educated, 21st century engineer, and every ounce of cunning and viciousness. I resolved to protect this life, and the lives of those I value.

For that task, few measures were too far. I would become a monster so fearful that we were left without enemies, lest my gaze have reason to turn on them. I would advocate a policy of isolationism and neutrality to avoid conflict. But if anyone attempted to topple Uzushiogakure, the last thing they would find in their lives was me, waiting, and I would visit ruin unto their village.

Again, I had a goal. And I, who had transcended Death, refused to fail.

Chapter 3: Childhood Preparations, pt. 1

Time passed, and I as I turned 3 I grew mentally, physically, and in my budding ninja skills. I should point out, Uzushio didn't really have many "ninja". We had clan-guard who were primarily responsible for home and territorial defense (think ninja mixed with samurai), seal-masters and sealers who were responsible for all sealing work and frequently paid missions to perform sealing for others, retinue-guard who protected sealers on missions and were probably the closest to other village's ninja, and the Shadows who were somewhat similar to Konoha's ANBU.

Still, I called them "ninja" skills, since to the rest of the world, that is what those skills were. Though samurai, monks, and even some peasant families were chakra active, the ninja were the flashiest. Samurai tended to focus on refining a few less flashy techniques for killing; beyond that, their talents were typically only seen on the battlefield, or by other samurai or their own servants when practicing. The general population had little chance to see samurai using techniques because of that. Similarly, monks generally disdained flashy use of chakra as a religious matter, and the most impressive monks were typically semi-isolated in their monasteries.

Ninja, on the other hand, could be and often were hired for even relatively low-level tasks such as repairing flood-damaged fields, dealing with chakra-enhanced beasts and bandits, escorts, and the like. Unlike samurai and monks who avoided showy displays in front of the peasants and merchants, ninja loved to show off. It was a great advertisement, after all. And so, over time, chakra-skills became more colloquially known as "ninja" skills.

Tou-san moved me onto both general physical training as well as proper martial arts training in the Whirling Fist, Uzushio's general military combat style. The style was a pretty interesting one, and fit my own previous experiences well. It emphasized out-fighting (fighting at relatively longer range) for both striking and grappling or Aikido style techniques; this made perfect sense considering most enemies, especially enemy ninja, had hidden weapons or crippling-strike close combat techniques. A Muay-Thai style clench could lead to a half dozen stabs to the gut; such an outcome was not exactly the best way of surviving a fight, let alone winning it.

Whirling Fist strikes focused on soft targets for knuckle strikes, especially at the lower levels. Seal-masters needed good manual dexterity, Uzumaki tended to live for a long time, and knuckle conditioning tends to make people highly arthritic by their forties. That combination meant knuckle conditioning, and thus hard knuckle striking, was contraindicated. Instead, harder targets were struck with hammer strikes, and there was a lot of conditioning for the arms to use a hard-blocking style.

Kicks tended to be low and practical, with a lot of training on how to change target from a kick already in motion, presumably to help prevent enemy knife-wielders from managing to slice the leg up. The grappling was more similar to Aikido and longer-distance jujitsu techniques. The style further frequently used circular motions and force-redirection to present a good target or opening for comrades when fighting in formation. It tended not to result in long grapples, but more positioning a joint to be struck, or moving the body to open up a target by unbalancing the enemy.

Overall, I'd describe the style as somewhat conservative, defensively prioritizing minimizing the practitioner's openings and danger rather than focusing on offensively breaking the opponent. Attacks tended to be fairly opportunistic, counter-attacking and exploiting openings brought out by the defensive maneuvers.

We had not yet moved on to weapons, though the physical training for the sword had become somewhat more intense. Tou-san was so impressed by my progress that he was actually a little worried; I heard him talking to Kaa-san that I was learning things amazingly quickly, and my pain resistance was intense, so much so that he had to be careful not to push hard, like he might with a normal kid. Knowing I had high pain resistance came from blocking training.

There are several different types of blocking in martial arts, but most can be boiled down to five philosophies. And this wasn't just on Earth, or Chakyu – this is a more universally applicable analysis. Any good combat style will use all of them, given the right circumstances, but will emphasize some, and personal preference plays a part in how effective these methods are as well as which sub-styles a practitioner focuses on. These are:

1) Tank, or being so physically tough you can take the hit and move through it. There is actually a lot of timing involved with such an approach; if you move into a hit at the right time, you can easily rob it of 60-80% of the total impact, and damage the balance of your opponent. Typically, you are then at an in-fighting distance, and by striking first, can begin a real beat-down. Once inside the enemy's engagement range, a tank tends to stick, keeping distances totally minimal, hitting hard and grappling viciously while preventing the enemy from building distance and recovering. This style is much riskier when weapons are involved.

2) Dodge, or, don't get hit in the first place. A lot of the time, this means being an out-fighter, staying at the edge of where they can and can't hit you, dodging the strike, and countering. Done properly, you can inflict damage at no cost to yourself, and frequently combined with parry-blocks which put enemies minimally off-line. Highly effective if you are fast and have a light build, this was my own favored strategy, and it worked well when your enemy may have some instant-death-touch jutsu.

3) Hard Blocks are the idea that a block is also an attack. It relies on conditioning the bones that you use to block, and making the blocking motions both fast and heavy. It tends to mesh most easily with Tanking, but can be combined with dodging without too much difficulty. You could see it in Earth martial arts like Goju-Ryu. One such block, to block a punch, involved at a basic level trying to break through their wrist using your own wrist in a block. At an even higher level, you might move forward and block at a joint like the elbow, breaking that.

The conditioning though was brutal; I'd forgotten how learning it on earth, the first time when I was 13, my arms were a constant bruise for six months until the holidays. The first day, when doing the conditioning sucked; I (like anyone) developed bruises over the practice, but just kept going. A week later though, everything started off sensitive and just got so much worse. Bruises on bruises on bruises over totally raw nerves until eventually those nerves start to die off and the practitioner starts to lose pain sensitivity in those conditioned areas.

If you haven't guessed yet, Whirling Fist loved techniques like that, spinning around an attack, building momentum, and counterattack-blocking before the enemy could withdraw; suffice to say, Dad was super-impressed at my resilience and willingness to continue practice.

4) Soft Blocks are just what they sound like. Think Tai-chi or Aikido. These are good for redirection, but a sufficiently stronger enemy with enough skill and experience against your style tended to break through as they learned to anticipate the pattern of force application they needed to use to deflect much of the parrying force. Parry-blocks fall under this category too, but I have yet to come across a hand-to-hand combat style which didn't include parry blocks, so they are not stylistically definitive. Although I liked the concept of soft blocks, and combined with chakra they could be effective, they were generally not used within Whirling-Fist unless part of a dodge.

5) Trapping Blocks are designed for grapplers, though are very effective for a striker when used against kicks. A trapping block tries to gain control of a limb after a strike, often leading into grappling. While Whirling-Fist had some grappling, it is not emphasized. Sando, an Earth Chinese military martial art, had some great kick-traps though, that were otherwise similar to the types of blocks in hard/tank styles such as some karate variants and Muay-Thai. I was including those blocks into my own style, mostly because it was really satisfying to catch a kick on the rebound and then literally toss my suddenly off-balance and helpless opponent.

So, like I said, Whirling-Fist was mostly a combination of striking with dodging and hard-blocks, and a bit of longer-distance redirection joint techniques. It involved brutal conditioning, though not of the precious hands (which could become single-touch death when at a sufficient sealing level). At my urging, and continued adherence to the training schedule, Tou-san had me doing the conditioning at the best rate for a kid my age and with my recovery rate.

The problem with this kind of conditioning was that if taken just a little too far, it could damage the body faster than I could recover, resulting in problems like spongy and fragile bones (a nasty issue that those who did a lot of running back on Earth could get in their shins). Kaa-san wasn't super happy, but gave in when she realized that it was at my own demand.

When they asked me why, I told them: "Kaa-san, Tou-san, this world is dangerous. I will be powerful, and have to fight, like both of you. The more I sweat and bleed now, the less likely I am to fail later. I will have no regrets." They were pretty speechless at this, and then both hugged me really, and I do mean really, overly, obnoxiously, tight. Kaa-san was, I think, a little teary, and mumbling something I didn't catch. But still, family love for the win. Suffice to say, my training continued, and was speckled with all the tips and tricks to improve my efficiency, both in training and combat, that Tou-san could give.

I think that's something important to recognize and emphasize. I wasn't training to go on the US karate competition circuit, or to stay fit, or against the tiny risk that I might one day be mugged. No, I was training for the eventual surety that I would be serving in our military, fighting for my life against other super-human warriors. I knew it. Tou-san and Kaa-san knew it. And that knowledge, well, it was a pretty good motivator.

After that conversation, Tou-san also started me on external chakra control and internal chakra reinforcement. I could do bark-sticking (Uzumaki's had more chakra, so leaf-sticking was actually kind of hard), and when focusing could tree-walk. We were working on leaves and unconscious tree-walking, and after I could water-walk Tou-san said he'd start me on some water-jutsus and water-elemental manipulation (his affinity).

Tou-san also began the basics of chakra reinforcement. At it's most basic, you could flood an area with chakra, making it stronger. Although I was a chakra beast even for an Uzumaki due to my exercises, even a Jinchuriki would get tired using that to maximize power. At a slightly higher level, you could enhance specific tissues such as bones, making them tougher, or muscles to make them stronger or faster, and by using beams or columns of chakra rather than pools, enhance them in a certain direction further increasing efficiency. Intention was important with Chakra, and as I trained my chakra to react to my intention, I would be able to control whether the enhancement was more for speed, or power, or toughness.

It turned out that the rapid-chakra internal flow technique (something that I luckily practiced so much that it had become automatic) actually gave a bit of a bonus to everything, but meant that maximum exertion drained energy a bit faster since I was technically able to go at a higher level. My chakra volume, density and vitality were sufficient for it to be worth it though, as the only real way to use techniques like this in combat with other buffing techniques was to make it automatic.

Plus, it meant that if I fought at a level equivalent to what would be (without internal-flow) 100%, I only drained energy like I was fighting at 90% of the flow-less levels. In other words, it allowed me to go all out at a boosted level for a relatively minor cost, but also made me efforts in general more efficient. Apparently it also made it harder to put me under a genjutsu, as the genjutsu would have to match that high circulation speed or it would jar against my chakra system. For the purpose of making my non-circulatory chakra enhancement combat-effective, Tou-san had me practicing enhanced punches, blocks, kicks, and movements with the chakra reinforcement to make the reinforcement faster, more efficient, and most important an unthinking instinct when I need to use it.

That involved a lot of work.

There's a saying that it takes ten thousand repetitions to make something instinctive. For example, ten thousand jab-cross combinations will make a jab-cross fast and automatic. To build up a full personal combat style back on Earth typically required something on the order of ten different kicks and about forty punches, blocks and counters, another twenty pieces of footwork, dodges and rolls, and a dozen throws, grapples, and escapes. Overall, with transitions, a practitioner typically required on the order of a million technique repetitions. And that was after they could do all of those hundred or so motions semi-perfectly and had picked out the techniques that worked for them.

I needed that same number of repetitions, but every one required different chakra enhancements. Different balances of which muscle was getting how much energy in which pattern. How that meshed with the movement, combined into an ass-kicking technique. It was involved, and even with hours of practice every day I knew it would be years before I was at a skill level that I was happy with. I loved it though, the complexity and difficulty of turning my body into a fine-tuned machine. But best of all was the beauty when everything came together.

Kaa-san too was starting to train me at an enhanced level. By the age of three, I could read about as well as a 12 year old, and could read basic seals (my handwriting wasn't quite good enough, according to Kaa-san, to write them yet). Part of this was that I already knew concepts, all I had to do was learn the word itself and the symbol (I truly loathed having a logographic rather than phonetic writing system). Part of this was my own genius, and the crazily flexible mind of a child.

And part of this was the unflagging efforts of Kaa-san. I knew about different inks, and brushes, and most of the technical aspects behind at least the most basic seals. And all of those inks, brushes and the like were crucial, as they effected the conductivity and charge of chakra in the seal. Kaa-san even started me on the small, fine-scale chakra control needed to be able to chakra-etch seals at a touch (and eventually even a distance with a variant of chakra-strings), doing so without using ink or brush at all.

Seals had three important aspects. The first was territory: seals could be used to define a space wherein a certain effect would occur, or a point at which it started. This could be the blast zone for an explosive seal, maximum object size of a space-sealing one, or persistent effect zone for a ward. The next was condition identification. A lot of the time, this was as simple as "chakra has been pulsed into the seal" for an explosion seal's countdown, but could be more complex like "object generating chakra smaller than 10cm by 5cm by 5cm is within the defined territory" for an anti-vermin ward (a huge seller on ships and for warehouses, by the way).

The last aspect was the effect, which was normally some combination of converting, modifying and directing energy. The effect was one of the things about seals that was just so damned awesome, since it could be basically anything. Teleportation or very fast travel? Sure, though difficult and generally pretty expensive chakra-wise. Sealing? Trapping Bijuu was actually, relatively easy in a lot of ways given that they are just sentient chakra. The trick was keeping them trapped. Explosions? Healing chakra converters (totally necessary for Uzumaki medics with their large reserves)? Genjutsu jammers? All of these were possible. And all had dozens of different, already discovered seal formulations in the clan and village libraries.

The hard part about seals was that they don't really fit into a conventional wisdom. Part invocation of oriental divine and abstract entities, part analogue to chakra's version of electrical-engineering, part computer-program, part absurdly advanced and obscure physics (especially for dimensional effects) and part art, there was a reason few villages had more than one or two seal masters. You had to have some sort of natural talent for it, an intuition that allowed the sealer to go beyond what could be calculated or even inferred. Thankfully, the Uzumaki bloodline seemed to have some natural predilection for seals that in any other place would result in being protected as a national strategic interest. Even among my fellows though, I was (somewhat unsurprisingly) a genius.

I'm not sure if it was Kaa-san's exposing me to seals so early, or my own natural intelligence and knowledge boosting my biological tendencies, or the fact that I had passed beyond the veil of our limited understanding of reality, or my exposure to hundreds of different magical systems, many geometrical, in fiction I had read in the past, but I just got seals. And I did so faster than anyone Kaa-san had heard of.

There was a set of sealing dictionaries, some of the greatest protected secrets of Uzushio. Seriously, I think the security seals checked my soul, and I was sure that there were some checking the body and even mind for any spying devices, based on conceptual understandings of observation. If you think about it, that means the sealers used quantum mechanics just in the security seals. I also knew that the dictionaries checked sealing understanding, and wouldn't allow access to levels that weren't already understood. Seal masters could get super squirrelly when they got paranoid, and the protection of these was the province of the most paranoid of the seal-masters, past and present.

These dictionaries were linked to the master dictionary, and were kind of like an advanced Wikipedia about the seals you had access to. It describes general usage of characters and sub-seals, some seals they were incorporated into, deep information (like celestial and elemental alignment, dimensional polarization, and chakra orientation) and known interactions with other sealing components.

Suffice to say, Kaa-san had access to her own, personal, version, with the standard protections. Her dictionary contained all level one and level two sealing elements, as well as level three and four sealing elements concerning detection and abjuration warding, Kaa-san's specialty. As a note, the dictionaries had nine levels. For perspective, Minato's Hiraishin, as a super-efficient distance-ignorant teleportation technique, might rank as a level six seal in its entirety. Most components would rank as level four or below.

Level eight was for things like summoning greater gods; in other words, with access to a level eight sealing dictionary, you could build a custom divine summoning seal. No one even talked about what level nine seals can accomplish, and I didn't want to know; it seemed like the kind of knowledge that might be capable of noticing you for knowing it. So, Kaa-san's level two/four dictionary was pretty damned respectable, especially given her age. She was expected to become at least a candidate to make sealing master in the future.

What was cooler though, was she'd officially made me her apprentice. I passed the basic exam (thankfully not public, really didn't need that attention), and was written into her book as her apprentice, giving me access to seals which she thought appropriate (sadly, still somewhat lacking – I wouldn't be breaking reality anytime soon). Still, they were so much fun to play with. I was basically on the sealing equivalent of writing "hello world" programs, but learning very quickly. I mean, hell, I was three. By age eight, I expected to be able to write my own original strategically useful seals at that rate.

Chapter 4: Childhood Preparations, pt. 2

So, more time passed, and I turned 4 years old. I'd continued my training, could water-walk, knew the basic hand-signs, and could do the body-replacement technique (kawarimi) and visual-transformation (henge). It really wasn't that ridiculous; Kakashi managed the same at age five, even graduated top of academy class, and I had the benefit of having been an adult and having started my training basically the moment I was born.

Tou-san said that as a special birthday present, we'd be finding out my chakra affinity, and he would begin training on elemental techniques, starting with an elemental clone if I have Water or Earth at a high enough level (Uzumaki's tended to have a hard time making illusionary Bushin). Kaa-san, not be outdone, gave me a calligraphy set, and told me that I was finally ready to draw my first real seal.

Dad handed me the affinity seal. Turns out, Uzumaki's don't use chakra paper to check affinities since it is "crude, inelegant, and imprecise. We have sealing masters for a reason." Instead, we use a seal that will give a numerical value for your affinity, one-ten. The scale is somewhat non-linear; the gap between an eight and seven is far more than that between a seven and a six. A nine would be a perfect, trained affinity. Think Senju Tobirama with his water. A ten would be even more than that; almost a deity of the element, capable of using it with a thought and minimal chakra expenditure. The only reason a ten existed on the scale was to make sure that no one went beyond it.

As someone who is untrained, unless there was something odd, I'd be in the one to five range. A five was considered amazing, especially for someone without training, and meant you could likely become one of the strongest users of that element in all the nations if trained. A four was considered a strong affinity for the element, to the point you might specialize in using the element. A three was considered worth training, but not particularly special. With a two, you'd struggle to ever really use the element. A one, you may was well not try and a zero meant it is impossible for you to generate this type of chakra, ever; a zero for the five elements would actually be a sign of a serious medical condition in humans.

Uzumaki's tended to have high water and/or air affinities. Dad was a fairly strong water-type, and it was likely I inherited at least part of that. I myself frequently did a meditation where I tried to become one with the wind, so I expected a relatively high wind affinity as well.

As Uzumaki's, we were always adding functionality into things, seals especially. So, at some point, someone decided since we were testing affinity, the seal may as well test density and yin/yang balance too. Apparently, testing volume was somewhat dangerous (involving either an invasive scan, which some are allergic to, or draining large volumes of chakra, which could overload the seal and cause an "uncontrolled seal rupture" - aka explosion). Instead, volume was tested via jutsu or filling chakra battery seals rather than using expensive scanning seals; ditto with refill speeds.

Yin-Yang balance was a number between one and a hundred, and represented the percentage of the chakra which was Yang or physically attributed. Uzumakis tended to be Yang-heavy, as did kids, but as a genius (and reincarnation) I expected my Yin to be relatively high. Typically, high Yin levels as an Uzumaki kid meant that as our bloodline develops and we aged, even more Yang chakra would be produced as our bodies "prefer" to be Yang heavy. Generally, even those with high Yin concentrations had at least 60% Yang going into their sixties (Yin increased with age, in normal people, while Yang was highest when young). This was a good thing, as it would turn me into even more of a chakra monster, but bad in that it would mean I had to constantly maintain my levels of chakra control lest I backslide.

Density, similar to the elements, was one to ten with 10 being almost solid when still and edging into the "has transcended mortal flesh and become a biju" territory. Tou-san, as a ninjutsu/kenjutsu based clan-guard of about jonin level was probably a seven. A normal shinobi-born kid might hit a density of two by the time they were twelve years old. A member of a major clan might hit three. A genius in a major clan who trained extensively, someone like Kakashi or Itachi might hit four or five, or, very very rarely six. A gifted Uzumaki who trained a lot might hit six by age twelve; a very few managed a density of seven. A single Uzumaki in a generation might have a chakra density of eight by the time they were about to enter puberty.

Typically, density increased with age and training, and was one of the major ways that ninja got "more chakra". Their circulatory systems weren't flexible enough after puberty to expand much in volume, but the density could (and did) increase. Conversely, before puberty, it was relatively easy for volume to increase, so density tended to have relatively low gains. Jinchuriki for example tended to have very high volume and density, though the speed at which the system grew combined with the absolute lack of established and reinforced pathways from regular chakra use tended to give them terrible control. A jinchuriki might have had a density of seven to eight by the age of twelve, and might reach nine in their lifetimes.

High chakra densities, especially at young ages, were typically a pre-requisite to activate bloodlines. Very high densities, especially without any full bloodline to activate, frequently resulted in a new bloodline, especially if the high density occurs before puberty. This chance could be further boosted by high environmental chakra concentrations.

Any Uzumaki with density seven or above before puberty could activate the Adamantine Chains bloodline, and by law must be reported to the Clan-lord so appropriate training could be arranged. In fact, this is one of the few invasive laws concerning Uzumaki clan-members and also required testing at the age of 12. Apparently when you first "unlocked" the chains, they tended to fly all over the place and could accidentally cause a lot of damage or even death.

Tou-san and Kaa-san didn't explain any of the particulars of the affinity test beyond the elemental affinity parts; I learned all the rest later. I channeled a trickle of chakra into it, until a light on the seal indicated a sufficient volume. A moment later, seven circles indicated numbers.

Water: 5

Earth: 4

Lightning: 3

Wind: 6

Fire: 3

Yang: 35%

Density: 8

"Holy… Tou-san! Kaa-san! Look! I'm going to be the god of wind!" I beamed at them, and saw the looks of mild shock. Tou-san recovered first.

"Hahaha… not quite. I didn't say this, but since your density is so high, you need to subtract one from each of your elemental affinities. Normally, we only see that problem in older people. So, really, it's this," he said, taking my paper and writing down the adjusted affinities.

Water: 4

Earth: 3

Lightning: 2

Wind: 5

Fire: 2

Yang: 35%

Density: 8

"Still though, you should be very proud. You'll be amazing at wind jutsu, and I can teach you all of my skills with water too. You're lucky; both are relatively common affinities for Uzumaki, so we have a lot of techniques for you. We'll have to see about getting your cousin Kiyoshi to give you some training." Tou-san was getting a bit carried away already with plans for future training. We really bonded during it, and he took a lot of pride in it, but it could annoy Kaa-san if he wasn't careful.

Still, seeing cousin Kiyoshi more would be awesome. He was Dad's first cousin, and one of the closest to our family. He was a bit younger, only seventeen years old, and hadn't married yet, though he brought a number of dates around to our place for dinner when he was at home. He was part of a naval patrol group in the clan-guard, and strong enough in wind techniques to enhance the speed of the ship while damaging enemy sails. Apparently, he was very well thought of, and considered something of a genius with his wind techniques. He was also a bit ridiculous, and over to top at home, with these big sweeping gestures and exaggerated stories that he told me. He was probably my favorite, outside of my parents and grandparents.

"Wait, wait, wait! Kohaku, look at the density and think for a moment, you jutsu obsessed knuckle-head! We have to bring him to Kazuo-sama, he may have the Adamantine Chains."

As an aside, Kazuo-sama was Kazuo Uzumaki, the clan leader, head of Uzushiogakure, and overlord of Whirlpool and its associated territories. Technically, he had several titles: sama, in this case, as he was acting in a non-formal setting as head of our extended family. He could also be called dono (milord) when acting in a more formal setting as head of the noble Uzumaki Clan, or as lord of Uzushiogakure. Finally, when acting as the Lord of Whirlpool, he would typically be addressed as kaka (excellency). The Uzumaki had this very strange history, where they ended up as a shinobi clan, a noble clan, and the rulers of Whirlpool, and for some strange set of formal diplomatic rules, the Uzumaki Clan head was actually three people: the clan head, the village leader, and the minor Daimyo of the country, most of which was organized in semi-independent townships.

"Good point Tomomi. What do you think, eh Daichi? Happy to have the honored bloodline of the Uzumaki?" And hell yes, I was honored. More elated, actually. The Uzumaki, partially because of our naturally high chakra density, had a ton of potential bloodlines (beyond a general propensity for seals and high chakra amounts). This was partially a result of chakra density being one of the defining characteristics for bloodline activation, but largely that the Uzumaki were an old clan that mostly stayed neutral during the warring clans era.

Over time, we'd bred with just about everyone at one point or another. This meant a lot of residual bloodline potential, and a high chance of activating something. Most of the time these were positive adaptations, but occasionally people had cosmetic deformities, sensitivities, allergies or the like that had to be managed. Within this slurry of potential specialness, the Adamantine chains had a special place in Uzumaki hearts; the chains were powerful in and of themselves, but had also been used by many of the Uzumaki's greatest heroes.

The main reason these chains were so awesome is that they were ridiculously overpowered. First off, they stayed connected to the user, so while they took a lot of chakra to use, you could return them to your body and regain the chakra. In other words, they merely occupied part of your reserves, rather than really draining chakra during a fight. Considering Uzumaki had high chakra density and volume to begin with, and the Adamantine chain users were prodigious even among the Uzumaki, it was rare for the amount reserved for the chains to prove needed; still, if it came down to the wire, the user could retract the chain and then use that chakra as needed.

Next, the Adamantine chains were, as you may have guessed, ridiculously strong (physically). As in, they were strong enough to hold back Biju with an experienced user. The chains didn't actually have to look like "chains", but could be edged or barbed for increased damage. They were ridiculously fast when being used too; since they were basically a chakra construct, the mind's imagination was the biggest limit to how quickly they can move. Lastly, the chains were chakra conductive, but only for the creator's chakra; otherwise, they were completely chakra blocking.

This meant that you could use chakra flow on the chains; chakra flow was a technique that imparted elemental chakra onto physical objects. Wind-attributed flow could cut through just about anything. With my wind and chakra reserves, I'd be a whirling dervish of chains capable of going Cuisinart-blender on everything within a few hundred meters.

You could also apply seals through the seals, so long as you could use chakra seal-etching. There were some seals designed to direct their payload through a chakra conductive medium; these were designed with the chains in mind, though could also be used with some swords. There was, in fact, a specific seal-modifier so that it could be directed unidirectionally through a chain. Sealmasters with the chains often used them to apply several seals at one time over wide spaces, giving massive battlefield control and allowing widespread destructive sealing techniques to be used with a good degree of control. So, defense, offense, and restriction, the chains were damned awesome.

In fact, it was recorded that in the early days of the Uzumaki clan's setting up shop in Uzushiogakure and the land of Whirlpools that an alliance of several pirate-shinobi clans were annoyed in the perceived incursion into their territory, and attacked. An Uzumaki champion at the time, who's name had since been lost and was known only by his title of "the Red Osprey" (he was the possessor of the Osprey summoning contract, still in Uzumaki hands centuries later) was said to have sunk a dozen ships, all commanded by ship-combat specialist ninja, and killed over two hundred enemy ninja in the battle. He then proceeded to the island, now known as Wave, that was their base, and threw them the head of the enemy commander. He ordered the clans to bend the knee, or lose the head. The Himura clan, whose ships sailed under red sails, and the Kawaguchi both surrendered; they are part of Uzushiogakure to this day. The others refused, and were utterly destroyed. The only weapon that the Osprey used were his chains.

So, hearing I might have these chains, I was pretty stoked. I'd heard the stories before, and had a lot of ideas as to how I could use them. Most of all, I wanted to find out if shadow-clones could use them, since that would mean I could make shadow-clones with chain-armor capable of tearing through even enemy jonin. It would make defending the village much easier.

And so, we got dressed in somewhat more formal kimonos and trooped off to fortified compound in the middle of the village where Kazuo-sama lives and works during the day. We passed a number of guards, most of them covert, but my sensing skills were fairly strong, and only the stronger stealth-types would be hiding their chakra enough to avoid me. I was sure there were a few of these near Kazuo-sama, but not that many. Soon enough, we were in a waiting room, and Kaa-san had informed a secretary that we had "non-pressing family business concerning the inheritance of Uzumaki traits in Daichi". As it turned out, Kaa-san actually had higher rank within the clan than Tou-san; we were a fairly meritocratic rather than patriarchal people when it came to rank, and sealing skills were highly valued.

We were served some tea and snacks by a servant, and about a half-hour later, the secretary returned to bring us to Kazuo-sama. Kazuo was a strong looking man, about six foot tall, with a full head of dark, wine colored hair just beginning to grey pulled into a ponytail. He was dressed in the semi-formal uniform of a clan-guard officer, which included a lightly armored chess-piece and clothing that looked both comfortable, respectable, and combat-effective at the same time. He gave off an excellent appearance and air for a clan-leader and lord. He stood as we entered, and smiled, beckoning us to sit with him while we gave our bows.

"Ah, Tomomi-san, Kohaku-san, and little Daichi-kun! You're all looking very well, and Daichi-kun seems to growing to be a fine young man. Which reminds me, it's your birthday isn't it? Congratulations; though it's not much, please accept this token, though it is not much."

With this, he gave me a beautifully detailed box about a foot cubed, made of a lovely lacquered wood with a hint of red stain. I bowed politely, thanking him greatly. I was curious what was in it, but too polite to open it until after we left. He could tell though, and grinning, told me to open it.

Inside were a pair of finely carved wooden ospreys and a seal. Inspecting the ospreys, I saw small seals scribed on the underneath of the wings. It was truly masterful work; though the sealing was not overly complicated, the fine detail and orientation of the seals was extremely difficult. All together, the base seal would, when fed chakra, detect the bounded space it was in, and have the Ospreys swoop about inside of it; at least, that was my best guess, as I didn't know a number of seals that were used.

I suspected that Kazuo-sama, one of the best sealers in the clan, had chakra etched the seals himself. Likely within the half-hour we were waiting. A real class-act, our clan-head. I was greatly impressed and touched, both by the sealing itself, as well as the thought that went into giving such a present to me, a four-year-old whose parents, while promising, were far from significant within the clan.

"My greatest thanks, Kazuo-sama. The sealing work is beautiful. And the seal itself; the ospreys will fly within my room?" At this he burst into laughter.

"Amazing! I didn't expect you to recognize that for years yet! Thank you for the compliment on the work. Are you interested in sealing?"

"Very much so! Kaa-san has even made me her apprentice." I was throwing Kaa-san under the bus when it came to our Head's attention a bit, but if I was going to be the child prodigy, then I was going to be, by god, a prodigy.

"Really?" This time, the question was directed at Kaa-san. She looked a bit sheepish.

"Ah, yes Kazuo-sama. He passed the test, and, well, showing him the dictionary was the best way for him to learn without always asking questions." Thanks, Kaa-san! "In fact, today is going to be the first time he is allowed to create and activate a seal he drew himself."

And now that I was reminded about that, I was excited all over again. Being able to create and activate a seal you drew is a big thing. While other villages may allow dangerous hacks to call themselves sealer, as the Uzumaki clan and with such a large number of available sealers, we held ourselves to higher standards. Though I was Kaa-san's apprentice, I would only become an apprentice sealer once I had passed this step.

"Excellent, excellent. I am always happy to see the promise of the next generation. Becoming an apprentice sealer at the age of four is an impressive achievement; I'll look forward to your future, young man. So, what brings you here?"

"Ah, well. I was thinking that I'd start to teach Daichi-kun some jutsu, and so tested his affinity. He had an eight on the density, so according the Chakra Density Indication of Adamantine Potential Act we brought him to you." Tou-san dropped this brick with characteristic lack of subtlety, and at this, Kazuo lost a bit of his composure. Granted, a four year old, especially one who wasn't a jinchuriki, with that level of chakra density was nuts. If I continued to grow as I got older, which I intended, I might end up actually achieving a perfect ten on my density. At the time, I didn't know what that meant, and I doubted my parents did either, but Kazuo definitely did; it meant I was leaving the map, and going into the space of saints and monsters. After a moment to reflect, Kazuo replied.

"Truly incredibly. Well, as per the Act, I will now confirm your findings." He passed me a seal. I repeated the process, and the readings were the same.

"Very good. And an interestingly high amount of Yin, with great elemental affinities. You will certainly become an admirable man, Daichi, if you continue to work hard."

"Of course, thank you, Kazuo-sama!" I replied with a little bow. I was pretty damned cheerful; it was hard not to be, getting that kind of praise from the absolute ruler of your territory and your clan patriarch, especially since I was a kid.

"Very good. I'll send Haruto over starting Wednesday next week. He'll train you in the Chains, and starting next weekend you will take classes with my niece, Kushina, who also has the possibility of the chains. She's a bit more than year older than you, but you seem very mature and I am sure you will become great friends." We thanked Kazuo-sama again, said our goodbyes and left. I was left thinking though.

Kushina existed, and I had previously learned that Mito did too. The Biju existed. The probability of this world being at least a near-neighbor of a canon Naruto world was significant and getting likelier with everything I was finding out.

Kushina was in the Academy with Minato and other Konohagakure brats, and Uzushio was invaded around the time that she moved over. That meant I had about two years at the earliest, and six years at the latest, to prepare for the invasion, with it being most likely three or four years.

I needed to step up my training.

Chapter 5: Brains and Chains

Following our meeting with Kazuo, and my successfully testing a seal to become an official apprentice sealer, I decided to pick up the pace in my personal explorations. For Uzushio and the Uzumaki to survive, we needed a force multiplier. For me to have it ready in time, I needed something to increase the speed at which I worked and learned.

Two years.

I had to be ready – more, to be sure that I'd be ready in time. Any extra time would be nice, but ultimately, not something I could be sure of. For me to be ready in two years, I needed to learn faster. I may have been a genius, with one of the best developed chakra systems ever, especially given my age, but the challenge I faced was daunting.

Looking at the numbers, it was a tough situation. The "village" of Uzushio had a population at time a little higher than thirty thousand. Of those, officially, a little under a seventh were in the reserve combat forces or some active formation. That was four thousand people who were at least nominally combatants.

But, of those four thousand, about a quarter were sealers, and only one in five sealers would be any more effective than, say, a logistics corps genin from another village. Of the remaining two hundred sealers, about one hundred could fight as well as chunin, and the other hundred could match jonin; they'd be glass cannons, since the enemy jonin, probably even chunin, would be faster and have more jutsu, but the battlefield control, both defensive, mobility, and destructive that a good combat sealer could achieve was pretty impressive, especially on a prepared field. Most sealers were in the reserves, or part of logistics units.

Of the remaining three thousand who had been trained as clan or village guard, about one thousand were in the reserves for a long time and had lost their edge or were logistics units and not particularly combat effective leaving two thousand to provide the bulk of actual combat-focused personnel. Five hundred of those were genin or apprentice warriors (remember, our village had samurai types too). Of the fifteen hundred remaining, about five hundred could match jonin, while the other thousand would probably be better qualified as better-than-average chunin.

At any given time, about a third of the combat forces were on patrol, attached to National Guard soldier units, or otherwise unavailable. This meant a decapitation invasion targeted at my home would face the following:

Four hundred jonin-equivalent

Eight hundred chunin-equivalent

Two thousand genin-equivalent

These numbers were actually really good considering our population. In general, as a martial village, there were a number of private citizens who could fight (particularly the women in samurai families, many as well as chunin, some as well as jonin), but they were less organized and more for a "the village is already broken into, how much can we make them bleed" scenario.

Uzushio didn't really run active combat missions, just protection details for any sealers that left the village and national defense, and we didn't do repeat business with villages that didn't take appropriate steps to protect our sealers. Some, volunteers, would go and serve a tour or two with the Leaf, as per our alliance, and bring back new techniques so we stayed current.

Because of our generally defensive outlook, our men didn't die nearly as frequently as in other villages, and so tended to reach higher levels on average. On the other hand, our forces were a bit older on average, and had less experience of actual blooding, though all had desensitization training. Our village was wealthy, and had a high proportion of sealers; our troops reflected that, and were on average better equipped and outfitted than our potential foes, especially for things like explosive, protection and trap seals.

The biggest problem was one of scale; Uzushio was relatively small, and our culture and military planning were designed around being too tough to hit, rather than actually being able to win a war by defeating an enemy nation.

For comparison, Konohagakure at the time had above two hundred thousand citizens, and a nominal military force of twenty thousand, weighted much more heavily towards semi-crippled reserves, with higher proportions of genin, and a large number permanently committed to supporting the Daimyo's forces and intelligence gathering operations.

If they went all out, Konoha could probably put about five hundred jonin or special jonin, a thousand chunin, and twenty-five hundred genin into an assault without seriously stripping the home guard or neglecting their feudal obligations to the Fire Daimyo. Konoha's troops would be of slightly lower quality overall, and significantly worse equipment for each quality category.

At the time, Konoha was the largest military force, so you can see why Uzushio couldn't be invaded by any single village. Especially so since challenging a sealer on their own turf was rightly considered somewhat foolish. Enemy villages rarely worked together, so Uzushio could be forgiven for becoming complacent, not that being forgiven would have saved us.

A big problem with the invasion I feared was coming was that Uzushio didn't practice as aggressive population increasing measures as other villages. Ninja villages had high attrition rates and demands for fresh blood. As a result, they tended to evolve cultures that were effective at filling this need. Lightning's Kumogakure was rumored to engage in significant levels of what I, as a modern person, would consider slavery to provide enough women to fill their ranks; to be fair, in a more historical middle-ages context it wasn't quite that bad, but even other nations thought that Kumo's actions were a bit distasteful. Konoha (an example I was more familiar with) had this idea that patriotism, especially for females, was to breed with the strongest male they can, then send the kids to the war-machine.

Jonin there actually got incentives to have harems. While Uzushio allowed polygamy, consorts and concubines, our long lives and relatively low death rate didn't necessitate such an aggressive breeding philosophy. But that was for relative peacetime. What that meant during wartime was that our casualties would not replace themselves. And since our troops tended to require more knowledge and skills, we needed a longer time to train them. A series of even relatively minor wars could draw down our population and reduce our institutional knowledge, whittling away at our strength until we failed.

Uzushio had not been seriously attacked in centuries. If we were attacked, we needed to crush the invaders so completely that they never even thought of it again. I wanted attacking Uzushio to become the Elemental Countries' version of a land-war in Russia during the winter; an obvious military trap.

So, there I was, just turned four years old, and I needed a way to at least double, preferably quadruple, our combat potential. Alternatively, I needed to be able to match the combat potential of five hundred jonin on my own. And, to make it even more complicated, I needed to do so without introducing a technology that could be turned against us in the future. For example, guns. Guns were simple enough compared to the local technology level that if an enemy village developed them, their genin might have over-run us. I sure as hell was not introducing anything that could be used against us so easily.

So that was my challenge. Become a monster, or create a monster of Uzushio, and all within two years. And, as I could hardly prove I was a reincarnation with potential knowledge of the future, I had to do so without being able to get massive resources or support from my village.

At my then rate of growth, that was impossible. Even assuming I unlocked the chains, and projecting my speed forward, I still needed at least two years of progress to go against a low-strength jonin without special bloodline tricks. Assuming I somehow learned or re-created the shadow-clone jutsu, which, from Tou-san's explanation on clones, was not known in Uzushio; I might have matched a hundred jonin, though would still have lacked the ability to go after any of the S-ranked titans of the battlefield. This approach was still far from sufficient.

I decided that if my rate of growth at the time was insufficient, then I needed to improve it. Sort of like investing in infrastructure and research in the beginning of a strategy game. The experience-sharing shadow-clone jutsu, my first choice, was not known to Uzushio then, or if it was, it was at a level far higher than those I had access to (no matter how nice Kazuo-sama was). While I'd need to reinvent the shadow-clone later anyways (or steal it, or somehow purchase it, I wasn't picky), it was beyond my theoretical understanding. But if I couldn't think more, I could certainly think better; the avenue I picked was thus thought-acceleration and mental reinforcement.

I've already discussed how internal chakra acceleration makes you faster and stronger. It turns out, that while it could use regular old chakra, using energies weighted towards ki, or yang, yielded better results. As in, a one-to-two parts mixture of mental and physical energies was almost twice as effective at physical reinforcement as a one-to-one chakra mixture. Getting too imbalanced wasn't good either though, since it took time to change and would make casting jutsu impossible while too imbalanced.

Reinforcement of tissues using chakra was similar, though bone, muscle, tendons, everything had its own optimal mixture. Tou-san was a wealth of information. I wasn't perfect, or even very good at the time, but I was putting in the effort to improve and perfect myself; all of this knowledge was important for training.

A similar technique could be done in the mind, but using a predominance of chi (ie yin or mental) energies. The thing was, over-loading anything could cause damage: tears, burns, and chakra induced morbidity were just a few of the possible effects from overload.

I'd just recovered from losing my brain to disease; I had little desire to experiment with burning it out. That said, my soul was the seat of my mind. I should have been more resilient to this damage than others, and Uzumaki's, especially those with chakra densities as high as mine, were stupidly regenerative.

And, if I did die, at least I would have tried.

By that point, my personal chakra-building, control, and sensing exercises and meditations were somewhat automatic. While they were more efficient when I specifically spent hours every day on them, I could continue to improve by using them in the background. Instead, my main focus became experimentation with neural and mental reinforcement.

In the days leading up to Haruto, my new tutor's arrival, I had a bit of time free which was normally used for meditation or extra studying. Since Cousin Kiyoshi was on a long-distance patrol for the month there were no other distractions so I experimented.

First, I wanted to find the maximum load on a neuron. I reinforced a nerve a bit above the hip, then poked it. I reinforced it a bit more, and continued to do so until I felt a slight burning pinch there, after which the nerve seemed dead. Having found the limit, I set my own personal limit as half that, and began testing this level of reinforcement in other areas where I could afford to lose feeling. I burned out a few more nerves, halved the limit again, then continued testing until I was relatively sure I had found a safe amount. Then I repeated the process using yin-dominant chakra acceleration, which turned out to be basically inherently safe much the same as how the yang-dominant chakra acceleration was for my physical enhancement.

The moment of truth came as I began to apply these principles to my brain. The first day, I only applied yin-acceleration. It seemed to make me a bit sharper, more aware and focused, increased my reaction speed a fraction. I thought my memory was stronger too, and processing speed faster. All excellent advantages, probably worth another standard deviation, or about fifteen IQ points, but not the gains that I needed. It did however give me the idea to develop yin-reinforcement techniques for my signaling nerves to improve speed in combat.

The second day, I began to apply the reinforcement to the brain. And holy fuck was it a trip. Turns out, that if you reinforced areas of the brain you reinforced everything that area controlled. Sensations, pain, pleasure, colors, desire to sleep mixed with manic energy, emotions, all of them, at once, mixed with leaps of intuition and moments of clear logic.

If I didn't have the memory of being a baby, I think it might have driven me mad; if I didn't have much of my mind in my soul, I'd have lost control of my chakra and possibly killed myself with a runaway overload. I managed to dial it back though, and began systematic testing of what regions should be reinforced, and how. I was basically getting all of the symptoms from those lists drug companies are obligated to read out in television adds. When not learning from Kaa-san or training with Tou-san, I suffered temporary twitches, random pains, burning feelings, sudden bouts of emotion, hyper-awareness, blindness, irritability, hysteria, even the hiccups, and this just in the days before Haruto arrived.

Meanwhile, Kaa-san had me started on a whole new set of seals. It turned out that as an apprentice sealer, I was expected to know more – a lot more. I already knew the eighty four symbols of the basic, introductory level. Next, I had to learn every interaction they had, not just as pairs but as groups. Seals interacted somewhat similarly to atoms; anyone that studied atomic theory in solids knows you have to worry not just about the nearest neighbor atoms, but those out several further steps too.

Although seals had a lot stranger qualities than atoms. Celestial and elemental alignment, dimensional polarization, and chakra orientation were all potential qualities to be worried about. Higher level sealers with a good intuition would often talk about the beauty, hesitancy, and other artistic qualities that could have their own sub-interactions too, though I didn't have to worry about that much at my level. Apparently, the goal for my level, and what separated out those who can become true masters from those who couldn't, was the ability to develop an intuition about the interaction of seal symbols. Otherwise, to learn literally millions of combinations – and that only for the most basic symbols – was not really an option.

Tou-san, not to be outdone in the "fun new stuff now you're four," had started me on elemental jutsu. As a Water-type, he didn't know the elemental manipulation training for air, but my water affinity was still strong, being above average even for a clan-member. He was happy to start me off on several exercises to train that. I spent hours focusing on extending my senses into the water, manipulating water from one glass to another, catching rain, and desiccating leaves.

It went really well. While I may not have trained my elemental affinity before, my chakra itself was highly trained and responsive, as I'd been consciously controlling it from a young age. Further, my concentration was high. I found within days that while focusing I could complete the basic exercises. Tou-san gave me a set of small water balloons and tells me to try and work on keeping one in orbit while I work on other things; this became a new type of meditation for me. Being orbited by small, bright water-balloons was great, filling my inner child's desire to be like some comic-book character.

With the first level of manipulation done, he taught me my first water jutsu, the Canteen. The canteen was a jutsu that collected about a liter of water, typically out of the air, but could also be used on existing water sources like a pool or river. It would collect only water; at low levels, it would filter out particulate but not salts, while at higher levels, the water would be completely pure. It was excellent as a way of avoiding being poisoned, and by purposefully adding and then trying to remove salt, served as an excellent training method and way of testing my control of water.

Not the flashiest jutsu, and my inner-child was a bit disappointed, but as an E-D rank jutsu it was a great choice, since I'd be using for the rest of my life. Literally starting that day; Tou-san banned me from drinking any water that I hadn't used the canteen jutsu on. He'd even do things like add capsaicin to the water at the dinner table as a trap. At the time I didn't realize it, but looking back he must have been worried about assassination considering my status as an "amazing prodigy".

Suffice to say, I was kept so busy by both myself and my parents that I had almost forgotten about Haruto by the time he arrived.

And what an arrival he made.

It happened while I was out in a training field, putting in my three hours a day of martial arts practice and physical conditioning. I had already finished my kata and impact-conditioning, and had moved onto workout circuits of running, pushups, pullups, leaps, situps, sprints with rapid direction changes and rolls for dodging, leglifts, burpees. I'd then repeat that circuit ten times until I was properly exhausted. The first seven were without reinforcement; the last three circuits were with, but at an even more brutal pace. And yes, that did suck just as much as it sounds. On the other hand, between that and my chakra reinforcement training, Tou-san said around then that I was as fast as most genin, and stronger per pound.

I was on my sixth circuit. So there I was, covered in and dripping with sweat, steaming slightly in the cool air. I could barely even see I was focusing so hard, ears buzzing with the sound of blood, pushing my body to the limit and just far enough beyond. And then, while exhausted and distracted, I heard a fwip sound of an incoming projectile and suddenly sensed someone who had been suppressing their chakra.

I tried to dodge but tripped, luckily falling beneath the object. I rolled, coming to my feet facing the attacker. He moved towards me, fast. It was only my over-reinforcement and hard-gained speed that allowed me to block the first strike, a punishing kick that knocked me over despite my defense.

He was on me in a moment, flipping me over, capturing an arm behind my back in a half-nelson and placing his other arm around my neck, a knife held in a reverse grip touching both his forearm and my jugular. I froze, filled with panic.

I thought, in that moment, 'no, No, NO! I can't die like this, I haven't done what I needed to, I haven't lived this life to the utmost, not to this bastard, this child-murdering piece of shit, please, fuck, I NEED TO KILL HIM FIRST!'

And something heard those prayers. It wasn't Tou-san or Kaa-san or a passing Kami.

It wasn't Haruto either, if you thought that's where this was going.

No, I heard that prayer. Or rather, my subconscious and chakra did, and they answered.

Chakra poured out of me, and in truly obscene amounts too. Enough that it scalded the majority of my skin just from the concentrations of energy. And my chakra, my chains, pierced the enemy and coiled about me, lashing the air protectively. A moment later, the enemy collapsed in a burst of water, and somewhat distantly I heard someone yelling, telling me that everything was alright, that I could withdraw the chains, to just focus on my chakra coming back to me.

I did, and Tou-san and Kaa-san ran over and hugged me. While I was still a bit shock-y, they told me how proud they were, and how brave I had been, and Tou-san even said he was impressed with my speed and strength and that we'd be starting some more advanced forms the next day.

Then they motioned, and over came a new man. He looked like he was in his late thirty's, so was probably at least sixty, maybe more like eighty years old. Kaa-san was glaring at him a bit, and Tou-san looked a bit sheepish.

"Daichi, this is Haruto-sensei. The attack you just experienced was only simulated danger to get you to activate your chains. Haruto-sensei will be taking over your training in the Adamantine Chains bloodline, and will be providing some advanced training in other arts too," Tou-san explained.

"Holy shi-" I started to reply, still obviously in shock.

"Language!" Oops, I thought. Kaa-san would definitely have me in the doghouse for that later.

"Sorry, sorry. It's not every day you get attacked, think you're going to die, kill the attacker with your previously inactive bloodline, then find out it was all some sort of sadistic test!"

So, yeah, at the time I was a bit pissed. I mean, sneak attack? While I can sympathize, they had to at least allow me to be angry after. I thought I was going to die, that the whole village would fall. And, to my shame, I started to cry. I blamed my tiny body's child hormones.

Freaking child body and child emotions.

And that was how I came to meet Sensei Haruto.

Chapter 6: Meeting the Firecracker

After our eventful meeting, Haruto-sensei explained what exactly it was that he'd be teaching me. It turned out, as I'd somewhat discovered, that the "Chains" didn't normally take the shape of "chains" at all, but were normally basically whips or tentacles. The "chain" shape was actually a chakra-conservation technique; since the holes didn't include chakra, it allowed us to make the chains longer.

This fell into the first category of chains-training: manipulation. This was also used to make the chains pointed, sharper, barbed, or smooth depending on how the target should be restrained or destroyed. Manipulation further covered how quickly the chains moved, and what motions they used to strike.

Beyond manipulation, there were a few other training categories too. The second category of chains training was manifestation. This included how dense the chains were, their overall length, and overall cross-sectional volume, all of which were typically constant for all chains in use at a time. Advanced users were eventually able to manifest two or more different types of chain.

Manifestation further covered the chakra balance in the chains. Higher amounts of Yang made the chains stronger, tougher, while higher amounts of Yin made them more fluid and easier to manipulate. Since I had comparatively high levels of Yin, especially for an Uzumaki, I was expected to have an unusually high level of control. Manifestation also included how quickly the chains were generated, and how much chain was generated. A large number allowed greater effect, but over a smaller volume for the same chakra expenditure compared to a single longer chain.

The third category of training was channeling. This was how the "Sealing" chains work, as well as chains that used elemental chakra flow. Channeling was important too if they were being used to do something like restrain Bijuu, and high levels of channeling expertise could allow users to make their chains resistant to enemy elemental chakra flow techniques. The most basic level of channeling was to only allow the user's chakra to exist within the chains; this prevented the enemy from using a shock jutsu or similar. At a higher level, the chains could also be used to drain an enemy, allowing the free flow of chakra that is either the users, or uncontrolled and elementally neutral.

Lastly, there was combat training. Or, how to combine manipulation, manifestation and channeling together to block enemy techniques, and slice, tear, crush or capture as desired.

Haruto-sensei was primarily a wind user, and would be training me in how to use what he called the razor wires, his signature technique. Haruto's technique used super-dense, very fine chains only as thick as some thin wire. He then used an advanced level of wind chakra flow to make the wires even sharper, and high levels of manipulation to control the rigidity on the fly to strike fluidly and viciously but with a strong cutting edge.

Haruto demonstrated his technique by cutting a line through the foliage of an oak tree; dozens of branches, some as thick around as my arm, were cut in a moment. He showed off the piercing version of his style too, driving a handful of wires through about a meter of rock before they separated and spun, cutting a whirlpool symbol into it. I was, as you may imagine, extremely impressed. If I could learn this, I would be much stronger. Haruto had my full attention, and found me an apt pupil.

My training schedule was modified to account for those lessons. He would come twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I would visit on Saturdays to take classes with both him and Kushina. Apparently training the chains was dangerous, and so we would not be training the chains actively together until we had both achieved greater levels of control. Other days, I was expected to spend an average of one and a half hours practicing with the chains.

This meant that daily, I did the following (note that Uzushio typically ran a day based off of dawn, but for convenience I'll assume that that is at about six in the morning):

6 am: Wake up. 30 minutes of meditation, then starting the chakra building exercises and meditations while going through a set of stretches for the day ahead.

7 am: Eat breakfast with the parents.

7:30 am: Start morning with physical focused training, including katas and conditioning and physical chakra techniques. Frequently train with Tou-san.

10:00 am: Finish physical training, eat a snack and start elemental and chakra control training.

11:00 am: Finish elemental and chakra control training. Wash up.

11:30 am: Find Kaa-san, train seals.

1:00 pm: Lunch.

1:30 pm: Continue learning from Kaa-san. Sometimes work on history or theoretical knowledge beyond seals.

5:00 pm: Train chains until it gets too dark to continue, either alone or with Haruto-sensei.

6:30 pm: Eat a snack. Personal training indoors, especially chakra control and growth exercises and meditations. Practice mental reinforcement.

8:00 pm: Dinner. Tou-san was often still on shift (2-10 pm most days).

8:45 pm: Bed. Meditate on my own chakra, and on keeping the link between mind and spirit. Focus on planning sneaky or cunning or creative ways to get more powerful, or weapons concepts I could introduce and how to achieve those concepts on a large enough scale to matter.

10:00 pm: Fall asleep.

This schedule kept up until the weekend. I continued to focus on my mental reinforcement, and began making progress in identifying what part of the brain interacts with what type of thought, and how much reinforcement effected it. I could significantly, if not hugely, speed up my reaction time in general. I could also enhance my hearing to an extent. It was more of a "enhance the processing of the audible sounds you hear" than actually enhancing my hearing though; the latter would be extremely dangerous with loud noises. Instead, this made everything a lot sharper and clearer.

While useful, it was far from the holy grails that I was searching for: eidetic memory, increased logical processing speed, improved intuition, enhanced muscle memory adaptation and enhanced chakra memory adaptation. With those I would be able to grow several times faster in physical combat, practical and theoretical sealing knowledge, and chakra manipulation.

Less important, though still an eventual goal, was a combat mode consisting of mental and physical reinforcement paired with the release of a combat-cocktail of adrenaline and other drugs that I hoped would be similar to opening the first gates, if less permanently risky to my chakra coils. I had no other way beyond shadow-clones that I could think of in the scarce years I had to prepare, and so had to succeed. I endured headaches, phantom pains, even a small seizure all for my goal.

Perhaps influenced by my irritation at my continued slow progress and the pain it had caused, I was not as "on the ball" as I should have been meeting Kushina. While her importance to the canon plot had likely changed due to me and butterflies, she was still the Clan-head's niece, and had enough promise to manifest the chains even at such a young age. If she showed any promise in sealing, and I suspected she would, she would be a fairly strong candidate for next clan head despite her gender.

On the other hand, when I was introduced to her, she acted the absolute brat. Alternatively whiny, petulant, demanding, argumentative and loud, when she wasn't being more than one at once, she basically acted the way I should have expected. Here she was, five years old, told how special and clever she was to have unlocked the chains at such a young age, how it showed her excellent breeding. Somewhat more sheltered by her parents than I, due to a combination of parental preference and the demands of my genius, and spoiled due to her station, this was a predictable reaction to me, an interloper.

So there I was, suddenly taking her Haruto-jisan's attention, having become more special by unlocking the chains at an even younger age. Not only that, but I had already passed the Apprentice Sealer qualifications, and, unbeknown to me, was being hailed as the hard-working prodigy of the Uzumaki for the speed at which I learned and observations of my training. I was mature and cool and collected even though I was younger than she. In short, I challenged Kushina's childish world-view and her self image.

And so I should have anticipated that she would somewhat explode at me after I told her to "Calm down, Firecracker," when she was being overly loud and aggressive. Suffice to say, the day's training was delayed while a long-suffering Haruto dealt with her emotions after excusing me for the day.

In my defense, she was driving me a bit nuts. I wanted to grab her and shake her, tell her that she had a duty to her family, our clan, our village and nation. That her very existence may have doomed us; so closely related to Mito-sama, with the sealing chains, able to breed and likely to develop an attachment to Konoha, especially if Uzushio were destroyed.

I had no trust for the leaf; for Uzushio, with all our seals to fall, and our ally to be absent? And, if I remembered correctly, there may even have been Root ANBU taking part in the assault. For this brat, this brat that so happily accepted the platitudes of Konoha and allowed herself, allowed Uzushio, everything I valued there, my family, to be sacrificed, burned, destroyed for paltry benefit to those two-faced bastards, those scum in human skins? And for this child, the potential cause of so much misery and suffering, to be such a brat?

Well, it may not have been mature, but I had few fucks to give and threw myself back into training.

The next week of training went well. I made a conceptual breakthrough in both sealing and my mental reinforcement, on the same day to boot. I started to get a good sense just as my day's seals training was coming to an end on how the seals might combine, something which was still on my mind when I later moved onto my mental reinforcement.

I realized that the best way to enhance my mind to achieve things like eidetic, or at least improved, visual memory was to improve the memory region, the visual signal, and the aid the transfer and permanence between the two. Basically, I was looking at parts of the brain as functional elements, and reinforcing those that were responsible for certain cognitive tasks. After that week of practice, I could take mental photographs and videos, and even link in my chakra sensing.

That wasn't the week's only progress. As mentioned, I also achieved level one seals intuition. When Kaa-san tested me, she was so proud she got teary, and almost cracked a rib she hugged me so hard (no, seriously, I had to reinforce it). As a more material bonus, I got my own dictionary with the first level of seals unlocked. Dictionaries only unlocked depending on intuitive understanding as a safety measure; the fact that I had one may have been a record.

As a note, despite the intuition, the dictionary was still pretty crucial. Intuition only meant that the user had a very good idea on how to combine symbols that they already knew to get a specific result. In a computer programmer, it would be like knowing how to write code without bugs. Considering a sealing "bug" could kill the practitioner, that was pretty critical. But the dictionary was what had the full list of symbols and their information to use. It also let a user take a completed seal (done via intuition), and then back-track, checking that the practitioner hadn't missed anything. The reason that the Uzumaki were such unbeatable sealers was the combination of the deep theoretical background available in the dictionaries, and the individual intuition as a result of the bloodline.

After Kaa-san told me how hard it is to achieve that kind of intuition, and so quickly too, the thought passed my mind that all this reinforcement mucking about, especially combined with how I'd been spending so much time practicing seals, might have resulted in pools of available spiritual chakra being re-purposed to modify my mind to be even more suited towards sealing.

That, or I was just that badass (or, more likely, it was a remnant artifact of having touched on some deeper truths while reincarnating). I was happy with any of those options.

Either way, after a test on Thursday I was suddenly Uzushio's newest sealing Initiate, the term for someone with intuition on first-level seals. Second-level and above, for reference, were titled "Adepts", with Fourth-level being "Experts" and Sixth-Level "Masters". Eighth level or above were Grandmasters; only a half dozen Uzumaki were recorded as becoming Grandmasters in so many centuries.

There was chatter that at that rate I might be the next Grandmaster sometime in my lifetime. Either way, I brought myself and my parents, especially my mother, a lot of honor. Tou-san got off shift early and we went out for a special celebratory dinner.

Of course, in his typical, endearing competition with Kaa-san as to who could train me better, he announced that he thought I was ready to test for my Basic Instructor's level in Whirling-Fist and then start in with weapons. I was so happy, both due to my parents' pride and my own progress that I was still wearing the smile two days later for my second "joint-training session".

I'd reflected a bit, on why that first meeting with Kushina went so poorly, and was a bit disappointed in myself. She may have been a bit of a bratty kid, but I understood her circumstances. It was also totally unfair for me to blame her for what I estimated to be Konoha's actions in an alternate time-line. I endeavored to make our second meeting better than the first, and immediately bowed and asked her forgiveness. From the surprise on her face, it was like I had done a full dogeza (formal Japanese kneeling prostration).

She was so taken aback, blushing and stammering that I couldn't help but chuckle, which of course irritated her again. Somewhat panicked, I said the only thing I could think of.

"Sorry, Firecracker-princess, but your blushing is just a bit cute!" Of course, I used the ambiguous kind of language that meant it could be "cute like how a kitten is cute", but also "attractive"; this sent her into another paroxysm of blushing and stammering that I couldn't say that and she wasn't ready to be married like in the stories and she didn't know me and I hadn't saved her from an evil dragon. Haruto, off to the side, could barely contain 7: Fireworks Show

Following my second, more successful meeting with Kushina, things settled down into something of a pattern of improvement. With Tou-san's intense last-minute preparation, I successfully passed my Basic Instructor's level in Whirlpool fist, which allowed me to officially instruct up to (but not including) Basic Instructor level to anyone I chose.

This was about equivalent to, say, a 1st Dan (1st degree Black belt) on Earth. There was still more to learn, and much more to refine, but it showed basic expertise in the style and the trustworthiness to teach it to others. It was a pretty big deal; as Uzushio and the Uzumaki were official a military village and martial clan respectively, achieving certain levels of proficiency in any combat art came with an automatic rank in the reserves. In this case, it gave rank equivalent to a leading genin who would be 2nd in command of a 4-man genin cell, behind the traditional chunin or genin-corporal. Given my age and lack of other qualifications, I would officially be on "extended leave".

Still, if I were to be going a traditional ninja route in a place like Konoha, and became, say, an elite-track genin under a jonin leader, it meant I would automatically be the superior of my team-mates (unless they had some similar qualification). The whole thing may be a bit silly from an outside perspective, but as a mark of respect and honor, it was a big deal.

I'd never have made it so fast without my prior understanding of martial arts; I mostly had to learn the Whirling-Fist kata and combinations and philosophy, then drill muscle memory rather than learn to move and strike in the first place. Even then, it took years of training several hours a day, much of it under a Expert Instructor and combat veteran, and in later months with my muscle-memory enhanced by my mental reinforcement.

The test itself was on the kata and techniques, as well as interpretations of how the kata were applied. There was also a physical capability test, and one of my chakra reinforcement and speed. Lastly, there was a spar against an Advanced Instructor; I didn't win, but did extremely well, especially given the size disparity.

Tou-san, pleased with my success, added knife-combat to our practices at my request, and showed how the kata and combinations were modified to account for both parties being at least somewhat armed. He told me that once I was proficient with these and had passed my Advanced Instructor's test that he would start me on swordsmanship.

Tou-san also decided that I was good enough at my manipulation and canteen-jutsu to start in on my next water technique, the water-clone. Water clones were pretty interesting, since they were about the same density as the jutsu-user, and had similar speed. Thus they made for a much more realistic distraction, since they sank into the ground a similar amount, sounded the same, and had little difference in movement compared with the original.

Compare this to other clones: Illusion clones didn't interact with the environment; a glance at the feet would show them for what they were, and they made no sound. Earth based clones tended to be very heavy, and sink into the ground. More esoteric clones tend to fall under one of these two categories too, either above or below the real user's attributes. As a further, water clones would "bleed" for a bit if struck, unless so much damage was dealt that they disperse completely. Still, this could provide a split second of distraction that's needed, especially if the enemy relaxed thinking they had won.

The problem with water clones was that they were weak. While they were quick and fluid, they could not exert nearly the same maximum force on an object, and could explode if they hit something hard enough due to the shock wave. Water clones, like many other elemental clones, were also stupid. Unlike the shadow-clone of anime fame (kage-bushin), which came with an automatic duplicated intelligence, clones came with a set of commands. The greater your affinity, and the more chakra you put into them, the tougher the clones would be against shock, the longer they would last, and both more and more complex commands could be programmed. Higher affinity also helped with detail, making the clone look like the user.

Learning the clone jutsu wasn't hard. Learning how to program them, and making them a bit more lifelike in appearance, was a real challenge though. Right when I first started, most of my clones looked a bit creepy, somewhere in the "uncanny valley" along with mannequins and other humanoid objects. With time and training they improved, but while I could see the use in them, Water Clones were hardly the trump that I was looking for, and so I merely got them to an acceptable level. Eventually, I would develop or learn the shadow-clone technique for all my cloning needs. Instead, I spent a fair bit of time and focus on improving the replacement technique.

While a skilled sensor could sense it at a fair distance, and just about any jonin was skilled enough to sense the replacement if they were nearby, it was still a great way to avoid large scale attacks that were highly damaging or difficult to dodge. It was a relatively low chakra technique, and was a major precursor of the shunshin, or body flicker technique. That was definitely a technique worth mastering, especially if I could use a modified version to make me generally faster instead of just increasing burst-linear movement. I hoped that if I could get the replacement technique down to a single half-seal, or no seal at all, that Tou-san would teach me the flicker.

Eventually I reached my goal, and impressed with my dedication to the replacement technique, and satisfied with my adequate replacement technique, Tou-san showed me both the shunshin and the Mist Generation technique, similar to what Zabuza used in the fanfics I read all those years ago back on Earth. That said, Tou-san didn't train me in silent killing or anything, though I was learning some stealth stepping techniques in Whirlpool fist at the time.

Tou-san did talk about how to combine the jutsu with my natural sensor skills, and how the use the technique to create cover. It's hard to hit what you can't see, and the Mist Generation jutsu was great at quickly covering large areas in impenetrable fog. As a sensor, I had a massive advantage within it too, so long as my enemy wasn't a sensor. Another use of the technique was for when the user was heavily outnumbered – the dense fog made it difficult to coordinate with allies, and allowed the user to turn a many-vs-one fight into a series of one-on-one engagements; if they were lucky, the enemies might even get hit by friendly fire.

Tou-san also mentioned I should ask Haruto-sensei for some help with my sensor skills, as he was apparently fairly proficient himself. Tou-san and I focused a fair bit on that technique while he was training me so that I could achieve anything from a heavy fog with minimal chakra traces to imitate a real one, all the way to a spooky cloud that was so impregnated with my chakra that even sensors would not be able to locate me within it, and that those with eye-based bloodlines would find it impenetrable.

What people often mistook about ninja-based training was that it wasn't really designed to turn people into death-dealing combat gods. That was more the samurai's deal. Think about the classic genin skills: body replacement (kawarimi), illusion clone (bunshin), self-anchored illusion (henge). None of those were remotely offensive. They werere all designed so that a kid can escape and evade a large number of chakra-less or low-chakra city guardsmen, militia, or low-ranking soldiers. The Mist technique was similar; it wasn't meant to make me more deadly, it was meant to increase my survivability. And at that, it excelled.

As for my training with Kaa-san, I was learning all the seal-elements that made up the second level of seals, and developing my intuition as to how they interacted with each other. She also had me making custom explosion seals, determining the size, heat/light/concussive force mixture, color, and timing of the explosion. It was a lot of fun (who doesn't love fireworks?) but actually fairly complicated.

While they may have seemed simple, especially since Naruto had everyone tossing explosion seals about like confetti, your average explosion tag was anything but. Each one consisted of several separate sealing circuits combined into one whole seal. There was a main storage, which the user filled to power the seal. There was the indicator, that interacts with the main storage to indicate the seal was full and that the user should not feed the seal chakra unless they planned on activating the seal. Then there was the primer storage, which slowly empties; this was what the user fed a small bit of chakra when they planned on using the seal.

It turned out, the seal actually filled the primer when the user first filled the main power, so the seal needed a counter to detect whether it has been filled once (don't activate) or twice (do activate after the primer is empty); the primer emptying provided the fuse, so too thick a line there and the seal will literally take the user's hand off. Then there was a feed circuit that took the chakra from the main storage and converted it to some combination of energies with some kind of bounding to make the explosion more potent within that space. And this was just for the most basic of explosion tags.

As a fun project, Kaa-san had me set up a fireworks show, after which she promised we would start in on functional sealing scrolls to store objects. I took full advantage of the ability to experiment, and wheedled Kaa-san into teaching me a number of second and even third level boundary seals to shape the explosions.

Among the tags I made, three were particularly applicable to combat. The first I made was a high intensity directed flame attack that was hot enough to burn through a quarter inch of steel plate at thirty feet. I called it the Dragon's Breath seal. It honestly wasn't anything unique; other sealers had designed similarly motivated seals of similar efficacy, and Uzushio's shops tended to stock a good variety for qualified buyers (eg, members of our military forces).

The second tag I made was a type of semi-persistent flash-bang seal that would continue making explosions within a bounded space around the seal; these explosions were loud enough to be slightly painful, and could be bright enough to blind for up to an hour at close range. The point of the seal was to make it impossible to fight for anyone without some kind of chakra-based sensing system; as a potent sensor, this would help me, and many Uzumaki with similar skills. This, I gave the rather innocent name of a Sparkler Seal.

The third seal was by far the most complicated yet elegant. It created a bounded chakra field, then condensed the field into a three dimensional spiderweb pattern. This pattern was then itself used as a circuit, and flowed through the seal to convert the nature of the chakra to make it closer and closer to fire until it exploded. It was by far the most advanced seal I designed, as it was essentially a seal that made the surrounding air itself into a second, temporary seal.

The cool thing about the seal was that it was extremely cheap in chakra costs, since the majority of the chakra came from the local environment. Also, because the spider-web shape, it would be extremely effective at causing damage with a small actual volume of effect being used to damage large objects (ie humans) in the overall area of effect.

The use of natural chakra, and the time that the seal persisted, made it extremely suited to landmines which trapped, fed on leaked enemy chakra, and killed the enemy, but also denied the area for anywhere between a half minute and five minutes, with larger fields lasting longer. It addressed a big issue with automatic land-mine style seals, which was a field could be cleared quickly by suicide-clones; with this, the field would still be cleared, but it would take a lot longer. Considering landmines were, much like on Earth, only really useful when supported by troops, that was fine. I called it the Spider's Seal.

Kushina and Haruto-sensei were invited to the show, as were a number of extended family members, and we ate cherries and these delicious sweet bean rice buns. Kushina was very taken with the idea of being able to make fireworks, and apparently demanded that whoever it is that was teaching her sealing begin instructing her. I felt kind of guilty at that; I wasn't sure I was responsible enough to play with explosives, but Kushina sure as shit wasn't.

Hikaru jii-san, my mother's father and a full-on sealing master, was quite impressed, and told me that he would start tutoring me after Kaa-san thought I was ready. Overall, the evening was a great success. The next morning, Kaa-san started me in on sealing seals (which I still think need some sort of better name. Sadly, dimensional subspace scrolls was both somewhat in-accurate and lengthy to say), and I went back to more conventional training.

The training with Haruto-sensei was not progressing as quickly. Learning to control the chains was kind of like learning to play the piano, but with dozens of individual fingers, all of which were new and had no reflexive kinesthetic sense. And, just to make everything a bit tougher, the piano keys were made of eggshells and couldn't be broken.

I think the analogy may have escaped me a bit, but suffice to say, it was hard.

I learned how to control a pair of chains first, and how to manipulate their motion and begin to refine their shape. Apparently I was doing well and learning quickly, but it was basically learning a set of highly complicated chakra control exercises, some at a fairly long range, while also learning how to use a whip-like weapon. It didn't play to any of my pre-established strengths, and my chakra control, while excellent for someone of my age and chakra reserves, was not so instinctual that it could simply overpower these issues.

I decided that my chains would significantly benefit from some correctly applied mental reinforcement, and began to focus on reinforcing the chakra memory reflexes. While significantly more difficult than the visual eidetic memory, it was not impossible. I achieved it a bit more than a week later by enhancing the sensation of the chakra-sense and combining it with mostly emotional memory reinforcement. Interestingly emotional memory seemed more linked to chakra control than other types of memory.

There was still the issue that I was making a lot of mistakes; I didn't want to burn the wrong things into my memory, and needed to overcome that issue too. With my physical training, I could simply do the motion perfectly but slowly, then over time speed up, going faster and faster, burning the memory in again and again. But with chakra memory, that wasn't an option.

To overcome that issue, I experimented. I found that by enhancing the short term memory constantly, I would have a perfect, temporary buffer of all my chakra manipulations. When I stopped reinforcing, and in fact scrambled it a bit, the memory of mistakes would fade. Then, whenever I did something correctly, I could flash-reinforce the long term memory.

I had achieved perfect chakra memory. The technique was pretty new, and hard for me to achieve, so I could only use it in general, methodical training until it became more automatic, something which would come with practice.

The chakra memory technique wasn't perfect, since there would still be residual information from my chakra sensing and personal state, but it massively accelerated my growth in chakra manipulation, especially for my chains, chakra control exercises and elemental manipulation exercises. It also helped with removing handsigns from jutsu so I could cast faster as well as using techniques one-handed while wielding a sword in my other hand.

By the end of the month, I had completed the intermediate levels of water and wind manipulation (basic, intermediate, advanced, expert, master), and could control two chains up to twenty meters (60 feet). The chains were still a bit crude, and very far from Haruto-sensei's masterpieces, but they did now look vaguely like chains, and I could make the edges sharper and serrated. The chains could also move fast enough to catch the average chunin. My chakra reinforcement improved a bit faster too, and I started seeing better gains from my meditations and exercises, which became easier to perform in the background.

Haruto-sensei, pleased and somewhat astounded at my progress, taught me the Bubble technique. Like the Canteen technique in Water, the bubble technique was a relatively simple one. It created a bubble of pure air around the user's head, banishing dust and other particulate matter. As the user got better, he could remove harmful gasses too, and the bubble would get larger and persist for longer. The bubble technique was commonly used as a precursor to the Air-shield technique which was particularly effective against fast moving projectiles, and the more advanced vacuum-shield technique which could reduce the severity of incoming fire and lightning attacks.

Haruto-sensei also began to teach me the advanced level of wind-manipulation which consisted of the Wind-flow techniques to use a wind-sheathe to sharpen projectiles. While I had not mastered them, my progress was extremely rapid, and Haruto sensei extremely impressed.

Overall, I was doing reasonably well, but still had a long way to go to meet my objectives.

Chapter 8: Wolves

Another week later, as I was just done demonstrating my expertise in wind-flow combined with my chakra chains (I was only allowed to practice this with one chain without supervision, and two chains with, due to the inherent danger), Haruto sensei asked me a question.

"How is it that you learn these things so quickly? It took me almost a year to get these chakra flow techniques to that level. Even then, I was much older and considered a prodigy because I learned Wind techniques so easily." A bit taken aback, I decided to answer honestly. My plans needed me to have at least some influence, and I'd need people other than my parents to vouch for me. Haruto-sensei was a senior and highly respected Uzumaki combatant, sort of like Gai or Kakashi in canon Naruto.

"Ah, well, Haruto-sensei, that's a bit complicated. See, the first part is when you were learning these techniques. You were probably already in active service, right?" as he nodded, I continued. "So, you had patrol, and regular wind practice, and were probably doing shopping and chores, and physical training, team training, and maybe a girl you liked?" He smiled, and nodded again.

I nodded too. "Right. I don't have any of those distractions. I wake up, train, eat, train and sleep. Every day. In this last week alone, I've put in over ten hours of training, specifically on the wind-flow manipulation. That's probably as much training as you could put in during a month, and it being closer together helps, I think, both for my mind, and for my body's memory of the chakra manipulation." His eyes widened a bit at that, likely impressed (and perhaps a bit horrified) by my dedication at such a young age.

"That's the first reason," I continued. "The second is because I am young. Young people learn things faster, and things become part of themselves easier than for older people. It also helps that I've been practicing internal chakra manipulation before I could speak, so I think I'm more suited to using chakra than most other people, again because of how I've developed since a young age. I'm lucky, too, to have a very strong wind affinity and excellent chakra stores; I can practice full-out, using as much chakra as it takes to succeed, without worrying about being tired, so I can improve faster."

"That all makes sense," he replied, "and explains how quickly you've been learning and growing as I've been teaching. But you got a lot better just recently. Did you have some sort of epiphany?" At this, I understood what he was getting at. Chakra is partially spiritual. That's not understood enough a lot of the time, especially with lower level ninja and chakra users.

At higher levels of chakra users, many understood that the spiritual explanation was often just as important. There was a reason that few would challenge a senior monk in jutsu; certain koans or riddles meant to expand the mind were capable of inherently improving the user's chakra (typically control or elemental manipulation) once understood. This knowledge was also one of the reasons why clans had such a leg up; they had repositories of knowledge, philosophical treatises written by past masters and living experts to pass on the small, subtle, but critical hints and tricks to optimize jutsu.

Haruto wanted to know if I had discovered such an epiphany; if I had, it would be an excellent indication of my potential, and potentially a boon to the many wind-users of Uzushio. Unfortunately, I had not; I had, however, experienced kensho several times while meditating on the wind, though any claims from a child of such would be highly suspect. In truth, my deep spiritual power did massively improve my learning rate and potential, especially of this sort of deeper knowledge and personal understanding.

I shook my head. "Unfortunately, I have had no new epiphanies, though I do meditate on the wind every day. Instead, and this was what I was getting to, I've recently had a breakthrough in a technique I've been developing. From a very young age, basically as long as I can remember, I've noticed my own and others' chakra; this isn't that unusual for an Uzumaki sensor. But, I played with it, and eventually came up with internal chakra flow acceleration and chakra reinforcement. From this, and the use of yang chakra to enhance physical reinforcement, I developed the idea of using yin or mental chakra to perform mental reinforcement." Haruto was looking stunned. Probably at a combination of my ridiculous genius (not knowing my mind, at least, is older than I appear), and at my luck in not killing myself.

I took the opportunity to continue before he could explode. "I know it's dangerous. In fact, it's so crazily dangerous that I think that if I didn't have a strong regeneration potential even for an Uzumaki that I might be dead or insane or broken. And, I think you have to start young for it to work; just in sensing, I've noticed that kids' brains are more flexible and change more than adults. I think the brain becomes somewhat more resistant to change as time goes on, so it probably needs to adapt to these kinds of techniques before it gets too set, or it's even more dangerous.

"But, I was careful. First, I started with nerves outside of my brain, and reinforced them to failure until I could determine safe levels, and experimented with reinforcing nearby tissues to detect any chakra conduction or leakage issues. Then, I carefully reinforced my brain with small amounts in specific places after I meditated so I could detect any changes. I messed up, a lot, but I figured out how to safely do two things so far: I can give myself eidetic visual memory, and chakra reflex memory." Done, I gave him a moment to reflect.

"Incredible," he said with a hint of awe quickly turning to disapproval. "Truly, incredibly. Insane, poorly thought out, massively dangerous, and a remarkably poor show of judgment for someone of your intelligence, but still incredible. I'm not sure if I should praise you or punish you right now."

"It wasn't that bad a judgment!" I protested. "I survived, and am fine, aren't I? Nothing even took more than a half hour to recover from."

"First off, you didn't know that would happen when you started," he countered. "Second, you didn't think to practice on a rabbit or something, and look at long term effects? Baka!" My eyes were wide as he gave a light smack to my head to emphasize his words. "And what about interactions with genjutsu, or foreign chakra, or your future development. Why the hell did you feel the need for this anyways? You already learn faster and work harder than anyone else I've ever seen, and I'm considered a monster myself." At this, I got a lot grimmer.

"I think war is coming to Uzushio." I'd been planning a conversation like this for a while. I had the benefit of possible-future knowledge, but needed a way of convincing others. It always helped an analysis when you knew the conclusion to reach.

"What? Why?" he asked, frowning. "You can't have heard anything on a mission, and I'd know if there was any intelligence indicating an attack."

I shook my head. "No, no, it's only logic. Allow me to explain. Ninja are kind of like wolves. Fast breeding wolves. And villagers and nobles are like rabbits and deer. When there aren't very many wolves, but lots of deer and rabbits, the wolves are all happy and fed. If two wolf packs meet each other, well, they may not be friends, and some young wolves may fight to prove themselves, but there is nothing serious.

"But, a generation later, when all of these fed wolves used to plenty have bred, there are now too many wolves. If the wolves don't want to eat all their rabbits, and all their deer, so that they have more in the future, then they must take the rabbits and deer of other wolves, and protect their own. And now, when wolf-packs meet, they have reason to fight."

As I continued speaking, I could see him start to nod, understanding where I was going with the argument. "Back during the Warring Clans era, these packs were small; we, Uzushiogakure, were large enough and strong enough that none could challenge us. But now, Konoha, Iwa, Kumo, Kiri, Suna, all are large enough, and have enough allies, that they might think they could destroy us. We are known as a powerful people, and would likely task any one enemy more heavily than they could afford, but they may alliance against us. Suna is isolated, and has no interest in a nation of islands. Konoha are our allies, so they may be ignored. But for Iwa, Kumo and Kiri I fear this is not the case."

My voice was soft and grimly resolute. "Uzushio's alliance with Konoha is dangerous. We are strong, yes, and our sealers present an increase in combat potential that scales very well with numbers, so we make Konoha much stronger than it would be alone. In return, we get intelligence services and ninja to call upon. But, the problem with creating danger to others is it makes them have reason for your destruction.

"Iwa hates Konoha, partially due to their Kages. To defeat Konoha, an excellent first move would be to remove us. Looking at a map, it seems improbable. Until you consider that Kumo too has reason to remove us. They are a militarily focused village, and our fleets and forces present a raiding threat on their seaward flank if they ever enter conflict with Konoha. Further, our destruction would weaken Konoha. If Iwa allies with Kumo to deal with us, then they need only pass through territories whose ninja look to either Iwa or Kumo for leadership.

"Lastly, Kiri resents us for two reasons. First, we are a challenge to their dominance over ninja affairs involving ships; while ours fly under Whirlpool's Daimyo's flag, ninja care little for our distinctions. Second, we are a threat to their philosophy; Uzushio, which treats its citizens well, and cares little for bloodshed, is significantly more profitable and prosperous than Kirigakure with it's focus on blood and killing. This is a threat to them internally, as our very example of continued existence gives lie to the idea that they must be brutal killers to survive. Thus, Kiri too has cause to desire our destruction.

"What then would these wolves gain if they were to turn on us? Iwa would weaken Konoha. Kumo would expand into the territories to the North East of the Land of Fire as Iwa pushes in from the North West. And Kiri would gain our own territories, and might be allowed to operate with impunity up and down the coast.

"So, I have established that wolves fight for territory when hungry, and that they have cause to want our territory. The only question, then, is are they hungry? And I fear that the answer is becoming yes, in these years. It has been a generation since the last war, and the villages are finally seeing this new generation come into its own. Full of notions of glory and mastery, and with a limited pool of resources which can be gleaned from the nobles, merchants and civilians, these wolves have already started to growl at each other from the edges of their territories. Judging by our increased usage of Konoha ninja to conduct anti-pirate operations by folding up the organized criminal groups that deal with their money and goods on the mainland, I would guess that the missions have become cheaper, which would only happen if Konoha's supply of ninja were higher.

"Further, you should remember that these wolves have little knowledge of the fire of our seals. They likely don't realize how capable Uzushio is, since we do not compete with them. Instead, we protect our people and live our lives. But for wolves who survive without making anything, and only eat the fat of the land, we likely appear weak and impotent. Where we see restraint, they see weakness, protectiveness, cowardice. Their leaders may recall well that Uzushio created the Jinchuriki, and fear our power, but this will only serve to temper their plans with caution while being driven by the arrogance of their rank and file.

"I would guess that we have anywhere from a year to a decade before the wolves are at each others' throats, but fear that we will feel their bite first. If pressed, I would estimate three years before these wolves are at our doors. To be sure in our preparations, we should be ready in two. As a somewhat known prodigy, I may be a target. In extremis, I will be deployed; after all, officially, I am already in the reserves as an assistant instructor of Whirlpool Fist. But most importantly, I want to do everything I can to ensure our survival."

As I finished my speech, Haruto looked somewhat sad. He knelt down, looking me in the eye, and pulled me into a hug for several seconds. Drawing away, he held me at arms length and wryly smiled.

"You truly are incredible," he said. "And I think you may be right concerning the current situation; this is something I will bring up with Kazuo-sama when I have tea with him later this week. But it should not be your concern, especially not so young. That said, now that I know about your unique technique – which will not be taught to others, or ever, ever mentioned to those who might foolishly try and copy it – I will be training you harder than every before. By the end of the year, I expect you to have mastered the expert level of wind manipulation, a year after that, be an acknowledge wind master. I also expect that you will achieve a proficiency in your chains at least equal to mine when I was thirty. Does that sound like fun?"

I blanched a bit; by the age of thirty, Haruto was already known as the Razor-Wind after a battle against a clan of ninja that also operated as a major crime family. They had attempted to expand into Wave, and had killed a detachment of Uzushio village-guard attached to the local garrison. Haruto, their commander at the time, had walked into the clearing near the capital where the criminals were gathered, and killed all forty-eight of them with a minute.

Haruto's wires were so thin that they would float on a breeze. Per the story, he floated the wires in as a cloud around him using passive wind manipulation rather than an active technique. When the enemy refused to surrender, he whipped up a bit of a squall while using wind-flow. The wire-chains whipped around, slicing through everything and everyone.

A large clean-up seal was used for all human biological material. Apparently one had been cut into four pieces; this was the fewest number of pieces for a single person out of the whole group. The largest number of pieces was twenty four. The seal was then sent as a warning to the criminal ninja clan home on the mainland. No one from that clan has been seen in Whirlpool territory since.

So, when Haruto said he'd be training me to that level, and expected me to achieve it within my stated two years, as well as all his other chain techniques by that age, I was understandably a bit daunted. It was nice of him though; he didn't want me to worry too much about a possible invasion, but thought I could handle being prepared to a level which would help whether I was or was not attacked.

Of course, that wouldn't stop me from worrying, and preparing. I did, after all, have my goal. Uzushio would not fall.

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.

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.

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.

Chapter 10: God's Hammer

The next year passed in a blur of training as I pushed myself to become stronger and learn seals at a greater and greater rate. Soon, I had surpassed the limits of my Kaa-san's teaching and entered Hikaru jii-san's tutelage.

Hikaru jii-san was pretty amazing; he was a full sealing master who focused on manipulating natural forces and properties like gravity, pure kinetic energy, mass and heat. Apparently while a younger man, and studying to become a master, he had invented the cooling seals that we use even to this day in food-stores and wealthier homes. That's right, another reason to love Uzushio – we had air conditioning. And that was yet another way that I knew Kiri was evil; no one else would try and rob the world of civilization air-conditioning, the hallmark of civilization.

Hikaru jii-san was also an accomplished combat-sealer. A fairly old man now of over a century's age, when he was about 60 and still in his prime (Uzumaki, remember), around the time that the Villages were starting to really form, he had been part of a four-man trade mission to Konoha (sealing scrolls meant that nothing else was needed for transport).

A whole clan that was against the idea of forming ninja villages attacked the mission. Under Hikaru's order, the Uzushio forces retreated until they came to a fairly empty field, where they seemingly decided to each make a break for it in the hope of escaping the hundred or so pursuers, leaving Hikaru behind to slow pursuit.

Suffice to say, Hikaru's guard had split up to plant territory-defining seals, not to flee.

The enemy ninja decided to go after Hikaru jii-san first, and charged across the field only for the entire surface of the field to suddenly become hot enough to ignite clothing. Hikaru jii-san had used a heat-concentration seal that moved heat from the ground to the air up to a height of 10 feet, and roasted all the enemy ninja.

So, yeah, gramps was kind of a badass.

I had completed the basics of my mental reinforcement, though I was always refining those basic techniques with practice. Under his eye, and making full use of these techniques, I quickly worked my through the third and fourth levels of sealing, earning complete intuition with each. Soon I was focused on the intuition for fifth level seals, particularly those needed for the God's Hammer project, as well as some sixth level seals that he had given me access to.

In my spare time, I had already completed my basic laser/ directed energy weapon that I called the DEWS-1 (Daichi-Energy-Weapon-Seal-1). It had proved a bit more complicated than I expected, as I experienced issues with thermal bloom and efficiency that necessitated a high-intensity pulse at a frequency which would interact with human liquids and fats but not be absorbed overmuch by air or common solids. It was still most effective at damaging softer and unarmored targets.

I also had a few bits and pieces of what would become the Sea-Hawk, but had not completed it, or even enough of a proof of concept to bring to Hikaru jii-san.

Tou-san had continued my instruction in Whirling-Fist, and I had completed both the Intermediate and Advanced Instructor's tests. My speed could match the minimum standard for jonin, and if fully enhanced, I was capable of matching most of the younger chunin in strength despite my lack of size. My swordsmanship was also developing; I had passed the Basic Instructor's test, and Tou-san had said that I was good enough to qualify for the clan-guard on the basis of my swordsmanship alone, which was fairly high praise.

My combat skills with the Adamantine Chains was becoming very advanced. Haruto-sensei, though now a father himself, and thus with less time to train me, had nonetheless gotten me past the manipulation and manifestation and even elemental channeling lessons. I still needed to continue to train and improve here, but was at the point that it was practice and the occasional hint once I hit a plateau; I had the basics and the training methods I needed. He had further started me in on mechanical manipulation techniques, things like how to use the chains as a drill, or saw, rather than as a piercing whip or flail, as well as the more advanced Seal-channeling techniques needed for the Adamantine Chains to become the full Adamantine Sealing Chains.

My elemental chakra training had perhaps seen the furthest growth. I was practicing the Water and Wind master level manipulation exercises, and could achieve results similar to B-level jutsu with a bit of focus and pure elemental manipulation. I had practiced the Water-Dragon, Water-Prison, Crushing Wave and Raging Waters techniques to a high degree for my water techniques, and similarly focused on Vacuum Bullets, Slicing Storm (a large scale slicing attack with medium damage), Razor Gust (smaller scale but more damage), Tornado and Hurricane (effective against large numbers, disrupted ranged jutsu) wind-based techniques.

I hadn't been overly impressed with the shields from either wind or water, and had worked on some layered, collaborative Wind/Water techniques that were more useful. My Pressurized Bubbles Shield, for example, functioned a bit like reactive armor and could be used offensively in close range as the explosive concussion would deal a fair bit of damage.

I also had a fairly long range and relatively low cost Water-Jet-Cutter techniques which I had invented; based on water-jet cutters back on Earth, it used Wind to accelerate Water with bits of the ground in it to ridiculous speeds (easily above Mach one, but more than that was hard to estimate). The technique was capable of cutting through a half inch of steel in a moment. Even worse for its victims, the Water-Jet-Cutter would leave behind all the solid particles which would cripple or kill those for whom the technique was not instantly lethal.

I wanted to start learning more advanced general chakra control, as well as genjutsu (illusions) and medical ninjutsu but unfortunately didn't have the training time to do more than read the occasional theoretical text.

Overall, I was almost six years old, and I was a monster capable of at least facing Elite Jonin (oh, they'd kill me, but if it were one of our elites versus an enemy I might be enough to turn the tides). But what would really make me a monster wasn't the fact that I was so much stronger than someone my age should be, but the project I had just finished: God's Hammer, the set of seals that would achieve a Kinetic Orbital Strike on Kirigakure. And that weekend, I was finally ready for the first trial.

The idea was a pretty simple one. The issue with getting things into orbit wasn't that it took so much energy to lift the payload; it was that the energy itself needed to be raised too, so you weren't just lifting the potential satellite which might only be a few tens of pounds, but all the fuel too which would weigh hundreds of tons.

With seals, that wasn't an issue; I actually used a gravity-effecting seal to lift the payload seal into orbit. Once in orbit, the payload seal would deploy the Kinetic Weapons, a series of thirty-seven eight-foot long, foot wide, seal-reinforced cylinders of metal that I had gathered from some hills rich in metals using resource-collection and refinement seals.

The plan was for the payload seal to reach orbit, then deploy the weapons. The weapons were heavily sealed themselves, primarily with a station-keeping seal to keep them at the right orientation and spacing, as well as gravity-acceleration seals and very precise location and guidance seals to move them at the right target.

Actually, the most difficult part of all of this was the targeting system. Not only did the guidance and movement system need to be incredibly precise and finely gradated, but I needed a very precise location reading of where Kirigakure was in 3-dimensional space. In fact, to avoid relativity issues (something all GPS calculations back on Earth need to manage), the calculations for which I had forgotten, I needed a no-lag communication between the beacon and the guidance system.

This communication was one of the major focuses of my research with Hikaru jii-san, and was also the first step for my creating a Hiraishin knock-off. I also had a visual-transmission communication seal, and backup maneuvering seals to do manual targeting if necessary.

As the weapons approached atmospheric re-entry, they would activate a dimensional-contraction technique. I'd totally cribbed the seal from one Hikaru jii-san had demonstrated at my request, as he hadn't realized the extent of my memory when I desired. The dimensional-contraction technique was a rare conceptual seal, and actually stored the space in a special temporal seal. Then, at a very low altitude, the stored space would be expended to make the cylinders much wider for all but the weapons aimed at the Kage's fort.

This would improve the damage, at a cost of reduced penetration through bunkers, as well as increasing the velocity (and thus kinetic energy) of the weapons by reducing drag while falling, and so further increasing damage. Also at that moment of impact, another seal would activate a "dense air shield" above them, reducing the amount of explosive pressure and damage lost to the air and hopefully reflecting the shock-wave back at the village to maximize damage.

To reach Kirigakure in the first place, each weapon had a Shield Breaking seal designed to penetrate the bombardment defenses. Finally, there were storage seals that would release fire chakra when the weapons impacted; this would melt whatever remnants of the cylinders existed, and hopefully spread secondary fires and destruction.

I had had to do a lot of work on not just the seals, but on how to create the seals. I tested them in vacuum, and in low temperatures, and both at once. In an early test, I sent a probe into low orbit with a chakra-sensing device; it turned out that space, being empty of chakra, actually drained chakra at a very high rate, and so I had to develop a chakra retention shield seal, and apply it to all of the objects.

I had similarly tested the deployment of the payload, and discovered that retrieving an object from a storage seal gets harder the greater the difference in potential energy between entering and leaving the seal. I actually had to develop a new, stacked, super-high efficiency chakra storage system based on fractal capacitance just to retrieve the weapons; the seals on that needed to be so finely etched to be small enough that it took a week just to get the technique right. Hikaru jii-san and the other sealers were quite impressed by the new chakra batteries, and adopted my designs for small but energy intensive applications which meant a nice residual income from my invention.

Worried that the weapons might hit an object in orbit, and that if that caused a failure I'd never know why, I developed a special chakra sensing pulse seal that only worked out of atmosphere without any distracting chakra signals; it was basically a space-radar with a thousand kilometer range that recorded back to a signal storage seal I had, making a status update every micro-second.

Then, with all the planning and testing done, I actually had to charge all of these; I had been storing a full quarter of my prodigious full reserves every night for eight months for this purpose.

When I had finally finished, and was ready to test the weapons, I didn't know what to think about them.

On the one hand, I was ecstatic. Here I was, a genius, granted. A reincarnation, granted. And effectively a magician, granted. But here I was, a kid, in a society stuck in the Middle Ages. And I had managed to make something that was Science Fiction during the beginning of the 21st century.

On the other hand, I was at least somewhat somber. Here was the protection of Uzushiogakure, the destruction of the enemy Kirigakure that would ensure our survival for a century. But, also, I think I understood Oppenheimer in that moment. I had truly become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

And I did so under no recognizance but my own. I was prepared to destroy a village, kill potentially hundreds of thousands of people. And this terrified me. I wanted to ask Haruto jii-san's opinion, talk to Tou-san and Kaa-san, even ask Kazuo-sama.

I wanted absolution from the responsibility of deploying this monstrosity of a weapon. But I knew I couldn't get it. This was my decision, my responsibility.

And so, on that Sunday morning, I deployed the weapon.

Everything was going well. The payload-scroll had reached orbit, and reported successful deployment of all weapons. Weapons had locked onto Kirigakure, and were gaining velocity on their approach vectors. Velocity had hit a bit over what I estimated to be Mach three. And then, one by one, I lost contact with the weapons.

What the FUCK just happened? How the fuck? I can't have just… My mind was a mess. I didn't know what to think, what might happen. Hell, the weapons might still hit, but I wouldn't know where. If that was the case, and they were off target enough to damage but not destroy Kirigakure, we might want to evacuate the village to reduce the target we presented. My shield breaker's were standard, known designs, but were fairly recently published, only available to other Uzumaki sealers, and I'd overpowered them with a ton of chakra.

I started pouring over the feedback data from all the sensors to see if I could figure out what happened.

The first five weapons didn't have any anomalies. Just, there one moment, gone the next. I started looking at the chakra space radar readings, and saw that each one seemed to have been broken up into what looked like, if I was reading the results right, a cloud of gas or maybe plasma, as well as a few shards of the weapon.

Looking at the heat readings, which were on a significantly slower response time, I did see that the weapons noticed a slight heat rise with each destruction, and that one of the weapons had noticed a sharp temperature spike, into the thousands of degrees C, just before failure. Another had caught what I was now thinking might have been part of a reflected laser beam, and experienced a few hundred degrees temperature rise, then later been destroyed.

Someone, or something, was up there. And they had the capacity to track thirty seven small objects flying at Mach three, and hit them with what I was guessing was a laser strong enough to vaporize them despite the fact that they were enhanced to be able to survive re-entry.

That, that was fucking terrifying. But for a moment, I couldn't worry about that.

I packed up my things with shaking hands, walked back to my room, sat down, and cried.

It had been a long fucking year. I had been pushing myself, especially the envelope of my mental reinforcement, really damned hard. I was wiped out, physically, emotionally, burning too hard and too fast. And that day had been when it was all meant to pay off; the pressure would be off of Uzushiogakure, and the pressure would be off of me. But then, then whatever had done that decided to fuck everything up, and so I cried.

I was still a kid. Sue me.

About a half hour later, I stopped crying and started thinking. I considered who or what might have stopped my plan. Gods and other such beings were immediately disregarded; there was no chakra presence at all, and my understanding of the local Laws of Reality made me think that divine intervention was unlikely.

In fact, on further reflection, I didn't think it was a "someone". Other humans or aliens might have made contact with the precocious fuck (me) who introduced Orbital Bombardment to a civilization who's most advanced weapon was made of re-folded chakra conductive steel. Or they might have killed me. Or at least done something; it seemed unlikely they would just kill my weapons then ignore me.

That left "something". I remembered that the world was, at one point at least, high technology, but had fallen; further, chakra seemed limited to the planet, and didn't cross the void of space well. What if the chakra was what interfered with the regular operation of high level technology? Then, any orbital assets would have survived.

I doubted that there was anyone living there; if they really wanted to, there were too many ways of getting into contact, ways that weren't used, and if anyone was living there, then the weapons probably wouldn't have been totally automated. I doubted any residents of this hypothetical space station would still be keeping to battle-stations thousands of years after the planet dropped out of contact, and thus doubted that an occupied station would have so quickly managed to destroy my weapons. Plus, a hundred-percent efficient food recycling program seemed unlikely, and anything less would have resulted in starvation after so long.

No, I suspected that there was either an AI or a complex computer controlling some Strategic Defense hunter-killer satellites. Maybe even orbital fortresses. Either way, it was likely set to destroy any ICBMs or similar weapons. But that was all I could hypothesize. Other things were, of course, possible. I just rated my conclusion as the likeliest possibility.

The scenario that seemed likely was not favorable towards me. I had no idea how to get around the situation. There were, of course, things I could test, like whether it was the speed of the weapons that caused the attack, or the height, or some combination of the two. I could probably design a shield to redirect laser-fire around my weapons. But ultimately, I didn't think it was a good idea to mess about with the unknown orbital power with super-lasers unless I wanted to risk retaliatory bombardment, especially since I didn't know what kind of Orbit-to-Ground weapons it might have.

A year's work was down the drain, totally useless.

Well, maybe not totally useless. And so I tried out a basic estimation: My kinetic weapons would still function as missiles; at a restriction of Mach two-point-five (a safe margin of error on velocity calculations), they would have less than a sixteenth the energy at impact compared to Mach 10, and only be effective at around two-fifth's the previous distance.

That meant the new missiles could be killing ninja at two hundred feet and destroying buildings at forty feet. The problem with this was that I'd need something like six hundred of these weaker rods to achieve similar levels of destruction. I just didn't have the time to gather that much metal.

I had no idea what I was going to do. I could only train and practice and hope I came up with some other way forward. Well, that and continue to store my chakra in case I needed it.

And maybe take a bit of a break before I burned out.

Chapter 11: Stepping Back.

Following the intervention of the Orbital ex Machina into my plans for Kirigakure's neutralization, I decided I needed to take a step back, and stop to enjoy life a bit more. I decided to focus on making sure Uzushiogakure survives, and took a rest on the whole destruction of Kiri until I came up with a better plan, one that didn't possibly annoy the hypothetical Orbital Fortress with unknown threat-assessment algorithms.

I had been uncomfortably close to burning out, closer than I had even realized. I asked Tou-san to teach me Shogi, learned Go from Hikaru jii-san, and asked Kaa-san for some recommendations on good books to read. Every day, I made sure to take at least two hours for personal relaxation, and one whole day off every week. Evenings would typically find me playing a game with family, or reading a book while sipping green tea.

And god was it necessary. I found that my food intake, previously near five thousand calories a day, dropped down to three thousand (I lived an active lifestyle with high chakra expenditure; that was pretty normal). I felt well in ways I had forgotten, like a weight and itch had been removed from me. My body filled out some, and I looked visibly healthier. All in all, I think that I had been pushing so hard that my healing factor, high even among other Uzumakis, was being slowly ground away by my previous habits.

As I turned six, and over the following half-year or so, I made a point of sampling the culture. I ate out at restaurants for lunch. I visited the theater, once, and decided never again. It wasn't that I dislike the theatre. I liked some modern plays, back on Earth, adored Gilbert and Sullivan, and had a great time watching Greek and Roman plays, reading some in the original. The performances available in Uzushiogakure, however, varied between incomprehensible formalized Japanese-esque forms, and absolutely puerile slapstick without much in between.

And the music… just urgh. The music sounded like strangled cats to me.

Some of the art, however, was quite nice. The most interesting thing I saw was a head-to-head art competition where each round, the artist had only one hour to make their piece of art given a prompt. They used jutsu and seals of all varieties. The judges would then go around, taking into account the cheering of the crowd, and make a cut.

Eventually, it came down to two. One, a fairly young Earth-user favoring sculpture, who was the clear crowd favorite (though part of that was certainly his good looks, and part his supporting cheering-squad of the rest of his patrol group). The other, a fairly old looking non-Uzumaki seals user favoring abstract and subtle elements that still somehow conveyed his message, oftentimes incorporated into the seals themselves.

I favored the sealer, and cheered loudly for him, though in the end the sculptor won. Afterward, I walked up and congratulated the sealer on the speed and elegance of his seals, as well as the subtle artistry, and mentioned that it was a shame that these subtleties were so difficult for those who don't study seals to recognize. He was fairly shocked at my youth and knowledge, but still showed off how he was able to get some of the effects, and I left beaming.

The architecture too I found very interesting. I had always been a fan of Medieval European architecture as a child, especially castles and other fortified structures, but had never had a chance to see Eastern ones. The Uzushio fortifications were an interesting mix of styles. They definitely had an Eastern look to them, especially in how the wall's slope changed a bit gently between the base and the main section of the wall. But, overall, the fortifications were more similar to those of an Industrial-age Europe than anything else, likely because of the need to resist jutsu impact.

The influence of seals could also be seen, as there were some structures that were otherwise impractical or unnecessary. I didn't get to see the restricted areas, but did get to see the general ones thanks to a note from Jii-san to one of the officers. My guide, a relatively fresh corporal in the Patrol, didn't quite seem to know what to think of me and my questions.

I frequently put on laser shows and fireworks shows for fun on Sundays. Eventually it became something of a neighborhood thing; Kushina would come over, of course, and Haruto-sensei would bring his wife and sometimes his kid too. There would be barbeque, often (and unfortunately) live music, and whatever sealers were there would put on a bit of a show. It was a pretty idyllic time.

Of course, I kept up with my training too. My skills continued to improve, my body continued to grow, and my chakra continued to develop. I mostly focused on my sealing, especially as I started many collaborative projects with Hikaru jii-san. First, I showed him my body-mounted DEWS-1, which he found highly interesting. We adapted it to have several more firing modes, and Hikaru passed the design over to the Infantry Weapons, Defense Emplacements and Naval Weapons research groups.

I read a fair number of other Uzumaki researcher's journals; the historical ones were particularly interesting to me, and I always found it useful to learn from the ways that they thought. A lot of the time, progress is cyclical in the kinds of thinking that it needs; by looking at how scientists thought in the past, you can make interesting observations in the present and future. This idea also worked with seals.

In fact, one section, an account of another experimenter's research, gave me a solution to high-velocity small to medium caliber weapons. The account spoke of a "device like a sling made of an iron disk which throws metal pellets at great velocity"; after a moment to puzzle it out, I thought about a centrifuge gun.

Basically, the design that I came up with used a centrifuge to accelerate the payload. In this case, 12.7mm or 40mm rounds. The 12.7 would be only stamped with a no-air-resistance seal and potentially an elemental chakra charge; the 40 would have the no-air-resistance, but also a seal for either elementally-charged High Explosive or Canister. The rounds were loaded into a centrifuge. A seal near the center of the centrifuge could give it very high tangential velocity compared to the surroundings; this meant that at the edge of the centrifuge, it will be traveling much faster.

For example, if the centrifuge was traveling at a tangential velocity of 150 m/s (fairly efficient to do with a seal) at a distance of 1" from the center, then at 6" it would be traveling 6x150= 900 m/s.

The centrifuge then released the rounds into a pulse-dimensional seal, which could activate, seal whatever is fired into it (so long as it hits within the sealing array) and when released, fire it back out at the same velocity. Before entering the pulse-dimensional seal, the rounds passed through a straightening array that made sure the orientation of the holding-seal and the firing path was precise. The weapon was effective in direct-fire up to two kilometers, and with an absolute maximum range of just over eighty kilometers, so long as the air-resistance seal stayed active. The holding, or "magazine" seal fired past a set of seals that straighten the path, so that it was effectively in a fairly perfect barrel which allowed improved accuracy for long distance artillery applications.

At first I thought that my (re-) invention would be perfect for defensive emplacements. Grids of these could provide some fairly serious direct and indirect fire support all around the island, after we worked out the communications network to control it. Instead though, the Naval Weapons group basically took over. They wanted to arm our ships with the weapons. They worked with the Surveyor's Research Group a fair bit on extending the capacity to target objects at larger distances, especially after I showed them a version of the Orbital Weapon that was more a "slow, guided shell with spotting capabilities".

The Surveyor's liked my semi-disposable spotter-missile, and loaded it up with a bunch of mapping seals I'd never seen before, tying the feeds in to the targeting seals. Hikaru jii-san was in charge of the mechanisms to steady and control the total system, so that the rocking of the ship wouldn't affect it too much. The Weapons Group adapted the long-range ballista targeting mechanisms, and tied the whole system together before passing it off to the Industrial Quantities specialist on the team who figured out how to make the seals that automatically churn these systems out.

I barely had to lift a finger. Seriously, I got to peek over basically everybody's shoulder as "Hikaru's sweet genius grandson/apprentice, who came up with the concept," and had my name listed as the first inventor for the system when we filed the design (in the "classified seals" seal, so no official credit, unfortunately), but I didn't have to come up with any of the work beyond the basic concept. I learned a ton too; it was so awesome not to be working on a secret project in my spare time.

I even got the Surveyor's group and the Weapons Group master who specialized in communications seals to add the functionality to my HUD-projector seal so that authorized users could link-in to the surveillance feeds and direct the fire remotely. Unfortunately, the security seals they added to the whole thing were level seven seals, so I couldn't modify anything myself until I learned those. In fact, I wasn't even allowed to watch them put them on at the time, having to wear a blindfold when my own HUD seal was re-applied.

Even still, that was definitely the way to invent. Having a horde of even-more competent individuals to take my ideas and turn them into reality was far better than working myself to death on secret projects.

It turned out that for Uzushiogakure, naval combat seals were really the most important combat multiplier. Uzushiogakure itself is a fairly small island, and only accessible to Uzushio ships and citizens. There was this whole process to immigrating, even from the rest of Whirlpool, I guess to keep out the ninja riffraff. The closest neighbor with a navy that wasn't a joke was the Land of Fire, but their navy was mostly run by the Daimyo rather than by Konohagakure which was fairly land-locked, both by location and by inclination. Whirlpool had excellent relations with the Fire Daimyo. In fact, Whirlpool's Daimyo (the village leader and clan-head acting as Head-of-State) maintained a permanent embassy at the Fire Daimyo's court; this was the only embassy with an attached Expert Sealer, who acted as the court Seals-Master and was the probably the best sealer you'll find outside of Uzushio other than maybe Mito-sama.

The biggest threat to Uzushiogakure and Whirlpool, as I mentioned previously, was Kirigakure. Whirlpool, apart from its fair sized navy crewed by Uzushiogakure chakra users and equipped with the latest seal-devices, also had very difficult to traverse currents. The navigation markers, controlled by seals, meant that only authorized ships could find their way to Uzushiogakure, part of why the village was chosen to be a strong-point in the first place.

Kirigakure was the only ninja Village with a sufficient number of skilled and powerful water-jutsu users and capable navigators and sailors to overcome those natural barriers; they also had a special underwater-operations group that could pose a threat to Uzushiogakure ships. But even Kirigakure's ninja couldn't swim the five hundred or so miles between Kirigakure and Uzushiogakure, so naval strength was a major indicator of Uzushio's defense. Because of this anything that could extend the range and hitting power of the Uzushiogakure ships got a lot of attention from the Applied Seals Research groups, especially Naval Weapons.

When I brought up the idea of Swordfish Underwater drones, and what functionality I thought they should have, Hikaru jii-san grinned.

"The existence of any such seal-devices would be a secret that you are not allowed to learn yet, Daichi-kun, but I would not spend overmuch time on such underwater autonomous attackers," he said with a wink. I grinned back, and right away gave him my idea for flying drones.

This too he found interesting and worth a joint project. A bit more complicated than the Cyclone Bullet Seal and the Cyclone Cannon Seal (the official designations of the machine-gun and automatic-grenade-launcher equivalents respectively), and something worth taking their time to get really efficient, the development on the Peregrine, Sea-Hawk and Osprey went slower than I might have liked. It turned out that again, the people with the research brawn to get sealers working on something and making progress was the Naval Weapons Group; they were more interested in patrol-craft acting as spotters than on the multi-role strike-craft capability of the Sea-hawks or the remote chakra transmission and heavier weapons of the Osprey.

I had to do more work with the aerial drones, as I had a much better understanding of aerodynamics and functional avionic systems than the other Sealers, even though mine came more from logic, flight simulators, and a few half-remembered conversations with Aero/Astro majors back in my previous life. Because of this, while I had developed intuition of fifth level seals, I had made very little progress on sixth level intuition more than six months after.

The drones themselves were wracked with issues. We tried a basic plane shape first, but the number and fiddly-ness of the seals to control everything, especially the flaps, became an issue. After a few months of failed designs, we eventually settled on something of a cross shape with acceleration seal "thrusters" at the points of the cross. By firing the bottom thruster harder, the craft would point up. Similarly, by firing the top thruster harder, the craft would point down. Turning was similar.

The first tests went well; the craft was relatively easy to control in good weather, though a bit slow to turn and totally incapable of the kinds of dare-devil maneuvers I wanted, especially in the lighter craft. Unfortunately, the damned thing didn't really have any way of re-stabilizing itself after a serious upset like a gust of wind, after which the bottom thruster was often not actually positioned at the bottom anymore. Hikaru jii-san actually figured out the fix to that, using a highly efficient if somewhat conceptually strange set of gravity-effecting seals to re-orient the craft when triggered.

The end result was effective, if somewhat less than I had hoped. The maximum efficient speed was about 210 m/s, or about 470 mph. General cruise speed was about 170 m/s or 380 mph. The drone could hover, and was relatively small and light so the chakra requirements weren't obscene. It had an effective loiter height of about 35,000 feet with a ceiling of just over 40,000 feet and a maximum range of about 1,500 miles.

For weapons, the drone had a variable-angle laser weapon, paired forward firing Cyclone Bullet Seals (though without the additional long-range guidance system used on ships), a nose mounted Cyclone Cannon Seal, and a seal with several fire-and-forget secret underwater hunter drones that I was totally unaware of (in theory).

The drone had a reverse summon seal on it so that it could be retrieved when near empty on chakra (a refinement I did not think of), and enough chakra to stay up in oversight for up to six hours in decent weather, three in unfavorable weather (bad weather drained the stabilization seals something fierce), and those times could be doubled with extended chakra batteries or clever usage of thermals.

Apart from weapons, the Remote Surveillance Group put in some of their most advanced sensors. Some were normally kept off, because they drained chakra ridiculously quickly, but even the "basic" sensors were advanced enough to provide good resolution from the ceiling height. The most advanced, which drained the chakra the fastest, had just been produced in time to be included in the design, and could only be triggered in a burst, could even detect most underwater enemies. Using advanced sensors pretty much required extended batteries or a very short flight time though.

Overall, it was a system that was comparable to a WWII aircraft, if somewhat less maneuverable and with better sensor capabilities. Most favorably, the range was sufficient to reach Kirigakure's harbor and loiter long enough and high enough for effective surveillance.

I decided that the Peregrine would have to be faster and more maneuverable than this though, and so we named the first drone the Pelican Weapon System.

There were about six months of "tests" that followed before the Pelican was completed, and the automatic-manufacturing seals started on. These "tests" were more "everyone on the weapons group discovering the joys of flight simulators" using test munitions. We started off with basic flight (aka how not to crash), and after some failures added a load more instrumentation to report flight conditions back to the user. We then moved onto spotting, and what objects look like from the sky, aka, flying over Uzushiogakure. Then we finally moved onto simulated attack runs (fireworks for adults at work).

In a very sneaky move I convinced people that dog-fighting might be fun; as a result, I found out that the maneuverability and speed kits for the Peregrine and Sea-hawk went up about six months on the priority list. They still weren't an immediate project, but I did notice that certain Seal-masters who had claimed their own "birds" had begun to make modifications to the standard sealing arrays that were not on the list of improvements in a bid to one-up each other. Personally, I was working on a fire-and-forget missile system with Hikaru jii-san that would lock onto a designated chakra-signal, in this case the active seals, and launch a homing, high velocity shell with a powerful explosive payload; apparently one of other budding Aces was a somewhat rival of his, and we "absolutely had to win the first Pelican Combat Tournament for the family's honor".

Eventually though all good things came to an end, and we couldn't justify playing with them anymore.

The project-completion party was pretty awesome; I ended up getting taken aside by this Weapons Group weapon-designer who had had more than few shots of sake.

"When you are older, and your Grandfather is not keeping you to himself, you must come work with us," he said. "We will make a beautiful fire." Then the pyromaniac pressed a shot of what I thought was sake into my hands and had me drink. It turned out much stronger, and I ended up coughing a fair bit, much to his amusement. Hell, I don't even know what that drink was; I suspected it may have been enhanced with chakra, since the basic campfire jutsu burned less.

I lucked out somewhat though. As one of the seal-system creators, who had been with the project literally from the beginning, and not being too busy with other projects (and really as a seventh birthday gift to me from Hikaru jii-san), I ended up assigned to the Pelican Application Team with one of the other seal-inventors. The Application Team was basically a group of officers, about half of them experienced with or currently in Naval patrol, as well as some general strategists, regular Patrol, a couple high ranked Retinue guard and even a senior combat-sealer. All of them were thinking of how the Pelican should be used, and how that use should be taught in the Academies and Training Courses. For me, it meant another four months playing with prototype remote-control weapons, and kicking the asses of many fairly elite and senior officers using them. It was awesome.

One of the things I pushed for, and got, was that there would be optional Pelican classes in the Academies for the pre-genin-equivalent students as Pelicans became available. Unlike many other villages, Uzushiogakure believed in additional training classes even after graduating as a basic recruit into the Clan or Village guard, or into a Retinue unit, including obligatory classes when becoming an officer or reaching higher command rank. Part of this was the nature of Uzushio's missions, many of which required a fair competency in Naval affairs, and thus more education than the normal ninja who might learn on the job.

There would be special Aerial Systems Training for selected service-members first, so that the Pelicans could get deployed as soon as possible, but eventually I wanted an aerial device with semi-customizable weapons selection to be available to anyone with the security clearance (not actually that high, since the things were remote-detonate-able and security sealed to hell) who was willing to fill enough chakra batteries for the manufacturing seals to produce one (and the ammunition). That way, Uzushio would be able to field hundreds of flying devices similar in potential damage output to a fairly fresh Jonin, but with more range, all commanded by people who would otherwise be kunai-fodder.

The first Pelican pilots were just out of training in time for their early surveillance flights to locate a (presumed Kirigakure) infiltration team. This would prove to have been a major blessing. A guards reaction team was sent to apprehend them, and succeeded. This would prove to have been a major mistake.