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.