The Best Laid Plans
Arun
Chapter 27: Destroyer of Worlds
Disclaimer: I'd never have believed that people in the US steal telephone wires for copper. But apparently, they do. In the First world. God, the world gets shittier by the day.
"Pease kill everyone in Grass down to the cats and dogs."
Team 7 stared, blank looks etched on their faces.
"Sensei?" Sakura asked.
"I want you three to go down to Grass and reprise against their capital for what happened in Tea," Kakashi explained patiently.
"That's tens of thousands of people," Sasuke murmured aloud. Gazing around the room, he said, "Sensei, we're your students. We've done everything you've ever asked us to do. But this… destroying an entire city… this doesn't feel right. You're talking about primary targets being civilians and not soldiers or military infrastructure. And it won't even hurt Akatsuki as we've no proof that Kusa's been working with them. We'd be stooping to Akatsuki's level if we do that and we're better than that. Isn't there something else we can do?"
"I wish there were, Sasuke. I wish I didn't have to ask this of Naruto, but we have no other choice other than surrender."
"I understand you're asking Naruto to do this because you think that we need to demonstrate deterrence to avoid a repeat of Tea capital, sensei," spoke Sakura, trying to reason with her superiors, "but aren't you assuming that they can do an encore? We have no proof that assumption is right."
"We can't very well wait until they nuke another city for your proof, Sakura," Tsunade responded.
"We have to assume they have the capability," Shikaku appended. "It is the only reasonable assumption. Else, why would they have wasted it on Tea capital?"
"But…" Sakura begun, but stopped as Naruto held up his hand to silence her.
Sasuke and Sakura turned to face the blonde. He looked at them with a little smile shown on his face.
"Thanks for protecting me, guys, but I agree with sensei. I know you do too."
Sasuke snorted.
"He's asking you to become the greatest mass murderer in the history of the elemental nations, Naruto," he said. There were others who had stamped papers and sent nations at war, killing far more, but no one would personally have killed so many as Naruto would if he carried out the Godaime's request. "Tea capital had some time to evacuate. Kusa won't. Kakashi-sensei didn't order you, idiot. He can't order you to do something like this. Refuse."
"Sasuke is correct on that count, Naruto. I'm not going to order you to do something like this," Kakashi said.
"But if I don't, the war is going to be lost, isn't it?" Naruto asked in a quiet voice.
"Most probably, yes. I think there's a remote possibility that we can get Iwa, Kumo and even Akatsuki to the negotiating table, but we'll have to surrender and they'll expect massive concessions from us."
"Then surrender," Sasuke spoke with conviction. Threatening to burn a city down was one thing, but actually doing it? Sasuke wasn't that sort of madman and neither was his teammates.
"No, Sasuke. Iwa has driven too deep into our territory and are looking at outright victory if we don't hold them for the next few months. There is no reason for them to come to the negotiation table at this juncture," Shikaku retorted.
Naruto laid a hand of Sasuke's shoulder.
"You know they're right, Sasuke. Let it drop." To Kakashi, his eyes roving at the people seated behind the table, he said with a sad smile, "Jinchuuriki, the power of human sacrifice, sensei. Always and forever. So, what's one more sacrifice when there have been so many others?"
"I'm sorry, Naruto," Kakashi replied, blinking away his tears. Signing the order was well and good, but the Godaime knew the price the execution would extract from his student. He would not have wished it on his worst enemy, but circumstances forced him to inflict such a fate on his children.
"I know you are, sensei, but needs must when the devil drives." A pause. "Can we win if I do this? I don't see the point of so much blood on my hand otherwise."
Kakashi turned to Tsunade.
"If we can hold for four months, we'll be in a position to win or negotiate a peace," she said in a somber voice. "Provided the other side doesn't burn out more of our cities, there're weapons we've developed that we can deploy on the Iwa front in four months. With these new weapons and the reinforcements from the Kaze no Kuni and Tea fronts, we should be able to push them back to the border and beyond."
"Tsunade and Kabuto will give the three of you a tour," Kakashi ordered. "Naruto can give us his decision once that is done."
xxxxx
"Can't we destroy Konoha like you did Tea?" Deidara asked Pain before the other assembled Akatsuki members.
Pain had called for an All Team meeting with the four surviving teams to discuss strategy and to finalize the plan to recruit two new members. Discussion on strategy had led to talk of the destruction of Tea and the fallout. Deidara, the explosives crazed maniac, wanted in on the action and was firmly for destroying more cities in the Hi no Kuni sphere of influence.
Tobi hopped up and down. Madara had recently joined the organization overtly under the assumed persona of a powerful, brain-damaged idiot.
"Tobi's a good boy, but sempai likes to kill puppies and kittens. Bad sempai."
Deidara glared hatred and disgust at the orange masked idiot.
"Enough," Pain intervened. "We destroyed Tea to weaken Hi no Kuni and to destroy any chance for a negotiated peace between Fire, Earth and Lightning. Further weakening Fire by destroying their infrastructure is against that purpose."
"So we do nothing?" Deidara asked, looking around.
"Yes. Soon enough, Fire will be defeated. Earth and Lightning will turn on each other over the spoils. We'll wait until the hiding places of the One- and Two-tail become evident and capture them. Until then, we will improve our penetration of the villages and do nothing except making good the losses of Hidan and Kakuzu. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Leader."
xxxxx
"What is this?" Naruto asked, pointing at a metal contraption mounted on a table in the center of the lab. Kabuto's and Tsunade's assistants had the machine open and were tinkering with it.
"This is the future of war," Kabuto, ever the showman, waved with a flourish.
"Okay…"
"You don't believe me?" the medic-nin asked.
"Yep." Sakura nodded.
"What does it do?" Sasuke asked.
"It's a machine that mass produces seals."
"In other words, a printer. We've had that for a long time, you know," Sakura said. "And they definitely have not revolutionized warfare."
"What Sakura says. Printers are not a revolution. A shinobi is needed to expend the chakra to charge the printed seals and that has always been the second bottleneck with the application of seals in war. Because no matter how fast you produce seals, they can't be used unless they're charged and you need shinobi to charge them," Naruto instructed.
"Quite. With normal printers, that's the case. But this is different," Kabuto defended.
Sasuke raised an eyebrow.
"How so? Do tell."
"This printer is mechanical engineering meets traditional fuinjutsu meets Seals of Power."
"Huh?"
"This seals that are printed with this printer is different, you see. This printer has modified templates of the explosive seal, the genjutsu resistance seal and the chakra sensing seal. The modifications include a limited chakra storage mechanism that is rechargeable and a charging seal that draws ambient chakra to fill the chakra reservoir."
Naruto, who understood the technical difficulties that had been overcome by the research team, stared lustily at the printer. Here was the Holy Grail of fuinjutsu that overcame the two traditional limitations of sealing – production rate and chakra charge. No longer would seal use be bottlenecked by the speed at which seal masters could write seals and the chakra capacity of the bearer to charge them.
"How did you get this done?" he asked, flabbergasted.
"Slowly, painfully, and with a lot of trial, explosions, error and more explosions," Kabuto replied, smiling.
Team 7 burst into laughter.
"I wish I had been there to see the research in process," Naruto said.
"As I understand it, you had more important things to do. Like capturing jinchuuriki, toppling unfriendly regimes, fighting insurgents and the like."
"Screw all that," Naruto said, emphatically. "This is the stuff of history. Jiraiya-sensei is going to cream in his pants when he hears about this. I almost did."
Sakura slapped Naruto on the back of his head.
"Cut the vulgarity, you idiot."
"Aww! Sakura-chan, you know I'm excited about seals. Is all."
"I know." To Kabuto, she said, "I can see the printer's uses in war, but is it really a game-changer?"
"You know those anti-personnel fragmentation bombs that you ANBU favor is forever constrained by the production rates of explosive seals. This machine overcomes that in one go," Kabuto explained.
"It'd work if the charging rate is fast enough, I suppose," Sakura conceded.
"What's the charging rate, by the way?" Sasuke asked.
Kabuto had the decency to look embarrassed.
"Seven weeks. And we don't ever see that coming down without increasing the tag size by a factor of eight."
"That slow? Explain again how exactly this stuff is going to revolutionize seal use in warfare?" Sakura asked pointedly.
Naruto glared at the researcher. Kabuto had lied and this wasn't the Holy Grail, after all.
"Well, a regular seal master can produce a maximum of 100 tags a day, right?" Kabuto asked.
Team 7 nodded. That was the world average except for a handful of freaks like Naruto. The blonde used kage bunshin to draw as many clones as he wanted. Was the time when there'd been a mighty interdepartmental fight between the ops and logistics at the height of the Tea insurgency over which department got their hands on him.
"This machine can print 8000 a day every day," Kabuto said, proudly.
"Yeah, that'd change things, all right," Sakura murmured, shock evident in her voice. "I guess that means logistics won't be rationing the use of the bombs all that much anymore."
"It's not just shinobi. We've installed a release mechanism for the chakra that doesn't need chakra adepts to activate it – and don't even ask me how hard that was. I swear I aged a couple of decades before we overcame that technical hurdles."
"You mean anyone can use these tags?"
"Anyone from the lowest recruit to the highest adept."
"Wow."
"So I guess you'll be productionizing this printer in two months?" Sasuke asked, remembering Tsunade's four month milestone for winning the war.
Kabuto chuckled and shook his head.
"No, no, no. Production line for the seals started two weeks back and we've had three operational for the last week. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to breakdown frequently – teething problems, you understand – and that one over there is under repair. There are plans to build a fourth and a fifth so that we'll have availability levels of sixty-plus percent.
"In two months, we'll have enough bombs for one division of samurai at projected rate of use plus thirty percent. In three, we'll have enough for two and a half divisions."
Naruto looked to his friends.
"I guess that means the mission to Kusa is go."
Sasuke and Sakura reluctantly nodded.
xxxxx
"Itachi. Kisame."
The two Akatsuki members stepped forward.
"Yes, Leader," Itachi asked. He was the de facto leader of their little team. Kisame preferred to stay in the background except when there was murdering to be done.
"I want your team to go to Kusa. You will handle the pickup from our agent at the regular drop point. You will also track the Toad Sannin's group that is operating behind Iwa lines and observe them in action. The situation is fluid so I'm wary of giving further orders as that might rob you of the flexibility of response. So, I'll give you your mission objectives and constraints. Improvement of supply situation for Iwa's invasion forces in Hi no Kuni. Mission constraints: If Iwa can handle the problem themselves, then don't bother with intervention. Else, intervene the hell out of the situation. Bear in mind that we don't want Jiraiya's group utterly destroyed, however."
Itachi nodded.
"It'll be done."
xxxxx
"I'm sorry again, Naruto," Kakashi said. He had his hands on Naruto's shoulders and was looking into the blonde's eyes as he spoke.
"Wasn't a thing you could do about this, sensei," Naruto replied, solemnly. "My life and my sacred honor for my country and my village."
Kakashi nodded and hugged the blondes.
"Good luck," he addressed all three members of Team 7. "Remember your instructions. We need the world to know who's responsible for Kusa's destruction."
"Yes, sensei," Sakura said, not quite glaring at her teacher. She wanted to choke the Godaime for what he'd asked off Naruto.
Naruto silently summoned a toad and crawled into its wide open mouth. Sasuke and Sakura followed him without a word or a look back at their teacher.
Kakashi sighed once the toad had jumped into the well and vanished. He hoped his students would find it in their hearts to forgive him for the thing, but there wasn't much chance for it. God, how he cursed the Sandaime and Jiraiya for burdening him with the thankless job of leading the village!
xxxxx
"Well, here we are," Naruto said, gesturing at the countryside and pointing east. "Kusagakure is six hours that way."
"Couldn't you have jumped in closer?" Sasuke asked.
Naruto thanked his toad friend with a gift of chocolate. After the summon vanished, he turned to his friends.
"I could have, but I'm not in a hurry to earn the title of mass murdering bastard, Uke."
"You could still refuse the mission, Naruto."
"And how many of our friends and countrymen will die if I do, Sakura?"
"But…"
"We've had this conversation before and this is the only sure way." A pause. "God, I wish I didn't have to do it, but there ain't a choice."
"There's a choice, Naruto," Sasuke commented. "But since you're too stubborn and pigheaded to change your mind, you're going to carry out Kakashi-sensei's mad order."
"Yeah, I suppose I am. Let's go."
As they sprinted toward their objective, Sakura kept glancing worriedly at her friend. Damn Kakashi-sensei for making Naruto do this!
xxxxx
She waited until their first break before she tried once more. Naruto had his clones out patrolling and guarding the approaches to their campsite that afternoon, and Team 7 was as reasonably secure in enemy country as possible.
"Naruto."
Naruto looked up, but Sasuke interjected himself between them.
"If you're going to try again to make him quit, Sakura, forget it," the Uchiha said. "He's not going to change his mind."
"That doesn't mean I can't try," she retorted hotly. Then, in a quieter, despairing voice, "What else can I do, Sasuke? This is not something where you shrug your shoulders, buckle down and live with."
"I know," the Uchiha replied, radiating calm and meeting her challenge, "but he's not going to stop and I don't see any point in trying to persuade him otherwise. I understand you're angry because he has to bear this burden alone and you won't. So am I."
Sakura remained silent and petulant.
"So let's ensure he won't have to bear all the burden. Let's support him in every way we can. Okay?"
Silence.
"Are you with me?" Sasuke tried again.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm with you. And okay."
Sasuke nodded and turned to Naruto.
"So, how are we going to do this?" he asked.
"I hadn't thought that far ahead," the blonde confessed. "I'd avoided thinking that far ahead actually."
"You know charging in without a plan will get you killed, Naruto. Kusagakure's going to be crawling with Kusa and Iwa shinobi as it's the invasion's major supply and staging point on this side of the border."
Naruto stared.
"I know," he mumbled.
Sakura shook her head and pulled out the Kusagakure map they'd been provided.
"Idiot. I guess it's up to Sasuke and I to keep you alive since you can't be bothered."
Sasuke nodded.
"You're going to need to be airborne or stand at a high enough point to target the city center," he said, tapping three hills on the map bordering the eastern and southern borders of the city. "That means we'll have to take one of these three hills overlooking the city."
"I prefer the eastern one. It's thousand two hundred feet above ground level and is located two kilometers from the city border. Further, it's furthest from Konoha's borders and the approach from the city is difficult. Will give us time to assault, take over, set up defense and let Naruto do his thing."
"All valid points," Sasuke agreed, "but see, the approach from our side isn't all that good either."
"So?" Sakura asked. "The way I see it, it actually works out in our favor."
"How?"
"The guards won't be watching this face too closely even if they're alert. Intelligence from before the war had it that duty posts the hills were assigned to unruly troops as punishment. We have to remember that the first rate units will be on the frontline with the invasion force. The guards on the mountain will be third rate garritroopers with all the baggage it implies."
"Point."
"Once we reach the base of the hill, you and I will lead from the assault from the front. Naruto will bring up the rear. As soon as the top is cleared, we'll find the tallest point with a clear line of sight to the city and fortify while Naruto does his thing."
"You're going to need ten minutes, aren't you, Naruto?" Sasuke asked.
Naruto nodded.
"On average, yes."
"Better make it twenty minutes then. Wiser to have a buffer than not," Sasuke said.
"Think we can handle the rabble for twenty minutes, Sasuke?" Sakura asked, flint in her eyes.
"Shouldn't be a problem."
"Let's eat and rest. We're two hours from the capital now. If we start at around 0130 hrs in the night, we should have plenty of time to reach the target and carry out our plan."
xxxxx
The hill loomed before Team 7. Clouds obscured the stars and the moon, and it was utterly dark. Ordinary eyes would have been mostly blind, but Sasuke had his sharingan and Sakura had her own special techniques for seeing in the dark. Naruto had something just as good in his sage techniques.
Sakura held up her hand three fingers extended and closed them one by them. When she'd formed a fist, she brought it down and Team 7 assaulted up the slopes, nimbly navigating the hazard posed by assorted rocks, boulders, trees, shrubs and whatnot. And though they could have reached the top of the hill in a couple of minutes if they'd went as fast as they could under present conditions, they took their time and paced their climb so as to be as fresh as possible when they reached the summit.
Sasuke reached the hilltop first. He crouched behind a waist high boulder, waiting for the kunoichi to join him. He scanned the area with his eyes, scanning for enemy patrols or guards at their posts. Naruto and Sakura joined him as he conducted his search.
"Report," Sakura whispered, taking position directly behind the Uchiha.
Sasuke shook his head in wonder.
"I don't believe it. There're ten of them and they're all asleep. There're no guards or patrols. God save us all from garritroopers."
"Be glad theirs are as bad as ours," Sakura retorted. It was the horrible state of readiness of garrison troops on the Kusa border that had allowed Iwa-Kusa alliance to advance so far so fast during their initial attack. To Naruto, she said, "Give us a couple of minutes and we'll clear the rabble. Come once one of us give the all clear signal."
Naruto nodded and his teammates sprung into action.
xxxxx
Jiraiya finished reading the message from Konoha, anger mounting. He broke the scroll over his knee, threw it down and stomped on it for good measure.
"That miserable SOB!" he seethed. "I'm going to wring his neck when I get back to Konoha."
"Jiraiya-sama?" the XO asked.
The Toad Sannin ground his teeth and took a deep breath to calm himself. This wasn't the place to lose one's temper. Not in the middle of enemy territory with his subordinates around. But he promised himself he would have words with Kakashi as soon as he got back.
"I'm all right, XO," he said. "Just received a bit of unpalatable news from home, is all."
"Yes, Sir."
"Gather the troops. There's a change of orders. We won't be engaging the jinchuuriki, after all."
"Sir?"
"Something else is being done to deal with the situation on this front in a more permanent manner," Jiraiya explained, stooping to pick up the scroll. He lit the document with a fire technique and watched it intently as it burned to ash.
"Yes, Sir."
"Bring me a map. We're going to change our disposition and reorient for engaging troops retreating from the front."
The XO looked blankly.
"Our beloved Godaime," Jiraiya bit out his explanation, "has sent an unit to assault and inflict massive damages on Kusagakure. That scroll was an advisory instructing us of our new mission. We're going to be ambushing the enemy troops as they retreat to their rear."
"I'll get right on it, Sir."
"Thank you. Dismissed," Jiraiya waved. There would be hell to pay once he got back to Konoha, but until then, there was the present and the immediate future to fight and survive.
xxxxx
The ten Kusa troops had died quietly without ever waking up from their sleep. The genjutsu that Sakura had laid on them had been so powerful that none had raised a cry as the two Leaf nin methodically slit their throats one by one.
Afterwards, it was a simple matter of dumping two of the bodies and the mattresses from their bunks. Sasuke had carried the cheap wooden cots up to the roof and set them up on the wall overlooking the city.
"You're set, Naruto," Sasuke announced.
"Better move some distance then," the blonde replied, focused on his task. He pulled the tools of this job out. The first scroll one had one kilogram of common salt. The second scroll had specially made rubber ball filled with water with a hundred liters of heavy water (D2O). The third scroll was filled with seals that Naruto needed to control the process while he was powering the weapon.
Sasuke and Sakura retreated about a hundred yards away to Naruto's left and right. They'd been around the blonde while he was creating the technique and knew well enough to keep the hell away.
Naruto verified they were both safely away and then started the long drawn out process by creating the seven clones he'd need to control and aim the bomb. The clones arranged the salt in the designated circle on the third scroll and placed the water ball on top. Then, they took their positions.
Naruto sat before the control scroll, placed both his hands on the proper positions and started pumping chakra. His mind was focused inward in meditation. The procedure was dangerous enough without a wandering attention to complicate things. Fortunately, he had a lot more control and understanding of the process than in the old days when he'd have slit his own throat rather than use a clone to power the process.
xxxxx
"What the fuck is that?" one of the guards on the western gate of Kusagakure's wall asked his team leader, pointing at the bright flashes of blue, green, pink and other assorted colors on top of Feito hill.
The jounin shrugged.
"Damned if I know, Datto. The assholes on duty are probably having a party and setting things on fire or playing with their chakra. They've got Nasu with them today and god knows what runs through that screwup's mind most days."
"You think so, Sir?" Datto asked uncertainly.
His commander shrugged again.
"Could be. Still, I better get on the radio and ask those goons to quit while they're ahead. If this gets back to the watch commander, they're for it."
"Yes, Sir."
xxxxx
The theory of matter energy equivalence was well established by theoretical scientists for over four decades. But no one had ever bothered to explore this particular avenue of research because there was no way to capitalize on its implications either militarily or economically.
That hadn't stopped Naruto, however. His interest in explosives had been piqued by the power of the improvised explosive device he'd used against Suna's jinchuuriki. Further, he had good teachers in Jiraiya, Kabuto, Tsunade and Sandaime who'd guided and channeled his curiosity into productive avenues.
Still, knowledge alone isn't enough. Theory needs a knowledge implemented in a machine – or a weapon, in this specific instance – to be put into practice. Mechanics wasn't Naruto's forte and anyways, the Elemental Nations lacked the mechanical knowhow to create a device that used fusion. But Naruto knew seals and he had chakra in plenty. Most important of all, he had the use of kage bunshin to learn by trial and error.
And there had been a hell of a lot of errors. Two hundred square kilometers of territory was pockmarked with craters caused by his failures and was pretty much uninhabitable. But where others would have failed and been vaporized by their failures, he had lived to learn from his mistakes and he had succeeded. Beyond his wildest imagination and harnessed the power of atoms.
xxxxx
"Sir, I don't think it's a party," Datto informed his superior. The latter worthy was fiddling with the radio and cursing undisciplined, drunken idiots not paying attention to their job.
"Sir?" Datto repeated.
"Yes?" the jounin turned to Datto and followed his subrodinate's hand, which was pointed towards the hill.
The psychedelic light show had stopped. In it's place, there was one single light powerful enough to light the night sky and shine like a day on the hilltop.
"What the…"
xxxxx
The idea was simple. A high enough pressure – and the temperature regime in such an environment – or just plain high enough temperature is enough to cause fusion in hydrogen. Naruto had first mixed the water with salt, centrifuged the mixed in rubber and dust particles. Then, he'd ionized and heated the mass with fire and lightning contained in a gigantic rasengan to hydrolyze the water molecules. He'd followed that with compression to increase the pressure massively and fed energy to heat up the cocktail.
Control – loads and loads of it – was required to hold the plasma together and for that, there were six clones and the seal array. Energy leaked, even so, and the discharged ions had been the source of the pretty lights that had spooked Datto.
But finally, the process was complete.
Naruto slowly stood up. He wasn't needed to feed energy anymore and he wanted as far from the bomb as he could.
"Sasuke, Sakura, behind the hill. This is going to be messy," he shouted, even as he ran down the slope.
Once all three were safely hid – or so they hoped – Naruto shouted to his clones to shoot the bomb. The seventh clone stepped forward, aimed and shot the ball at Kusagakure. This was arguably the most dangerous step of the process, because the ball of plasma was on the edge of fusion and barely under control.
To Naruto's relief, containment did not fail.
xxxxx
Approximately five hundred yards from ground level and two hundred and third yards from the city center, the ball destabilized with a temperature spike as the containment field collapsed. Ten grams of matter were converted into energy that was the equivalent of approximately 215 kilotons of TNT.
Kusa had a diameter between four and eight kilometers. The center of the city ceased to exist. The rest of the city did not fare much better as the explosion started a firestorm that within the day saw the practically every building burned to ashes. The buildings had been proofed against fires with seals, of course, but the temperature of the explosion as well as the firestorm were above the threshold of civilian seals and everything that could burn, burned.
The death toll was sky high and trending upwards.
xxxxx
Sasuke and Sakura worked at the base of the hill, etching a 'Konoha owned Kusa's ass' message on the hillside that was phrased differently. Naruto didn't join them. He was lost in his own nightmares.
"I wish I had died than cause this obscenity," Naruto whispered as he watched the city burn on his knees from the building's rooftop. "Oh, I wish I had never been born."
xxxxx
Author's notes:
A soldier is not a mass murderer. A soldier is not a mass murderer. A soldier is not a mass murderer.
Repeat that. This chapter was easy to write, but I'm sure that I'll get plenty of complaints about Team 7 being OOC as well as the science. But while I can see Team 7 killing soldiers and enemy sympathizers, I can't see them killing a city for kicks. Can you? If you can, I have failed as a writer.
As to the science, Naruto canon seems to follow the Lovecraftian rhyme:
"That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange eons, even death may die."
At least, Naruto's weapon has some theoretical basis. Is all I can say. ^_^; Still, if anyone can verify the yield, I'd be much obliged. I did some rough calculation to get that value, but was too lazy to verify it. The lucky person has the option of being redshirted or brownshirted in my novel (and god knows when I'll finish it.)
Keep reading! Who knows, there might be more chapters in the very near future. :)
Update: Thanks to The Unicorn for pointing out a logical disconnect in the story (how the hell did the houses in Kusa end up without fireproof seals?) and well as spotting two other errors or oversights. They're all corrected.