It was six the next morning. Dawn had barely broken.
Morning fog still lingered over the vast wasteland on the eastern edge of the village. Cold, damp mist drifted around their ankles.
Breathing it in made even their windpipes go numb.
More than ten thousand ninja crowded into the mud, a dense sea of heads.
None wore standard-issue chain mail. They all wore the same single layer of gray cloth.
Their ninja tool pouches had all been confiscated. In their place were crude wooden-handled shovels and heavy pickaxes.
Iron clanged against iron in a jumbled chorus.
A Genin in the front row lost his grip, and a pickaxe head smashed into the top of his foot. He grunted in pain and bent over to clutch it.
A stick suddenly struck his back. The jujube-wood club hit his thin clothing with a sickening thud.
The Genin stumbled forward and landed face-first in the black mud.
An Uchiha Chunin stood behind him, a glaring red armband tied around his right arm and a straight sword in his hand.
"What are you dawdling for?" The Uchiha Chunin spat. His red Sharingan gleamed in the fog.
He stepped forward, but his leather boot slipped in the mud. His body swayed.
He quickly caught his balance and slapped the flat of his blade against his thigh twice to hide his embarrassment.
He raised his voice. "Everyone, stand up straight!"
Dozens of ninja around him immediately straightened their backs. None dared breathe too loudly.
At six sharp, an opening appeared in the thick fog.
Shu Shiraishi walked over from the direction of the village.
He wore a black short-sleeved shirt and military pants, but not the Hokage hat.
As he walked, he looked down at a sheet of parchment in his hand.
The wind was strong. A corner of the parchment curled up and smacked his chin.
He clicked his tongue and forced the corner flat with his thumb. His military boots splashed through puddles, sending mud flying.
He walked to the very center of the wasteland.
A two-meter-high slab of granite lay there, a piece of waste rock dug up while clearing the surface the day before.
Shu Shiraishi stuffed the plans into his pants pocket and planted a military boot on the granite.
He raised his head and surveyed the crowd.
As far as he could see, more than ten thousand heads bowed in unison.
Shu Shiraishi wasted no words. He raised his right leg, bending his knee slightly.
His military boot came down hard on the center of the granite, driving the air before it.
Boom! A thunderous, muffled blast rang out.
The hard, two-meter-high slab of granite exploded down the middle.
Spiderweb cracks spread across the entire rock in an instant. Then it broke into hundreds of fragments.
The shock wave kicked up a ring of dust. Fist-sized pieces of rock shot out and struck several Earth Release ninja in the face.
Swollen, purple lumps rose on their foreheads, and blood ran down the bridges of their noses.
None dared wipe it away. None even took half a step back.
"Heavy Industry Base No. 1. Begin construction."
Shu Shiraishi withdrew his foot and scraped the mud off his boot on the broken stone.
The hundreds of Earth Release ninja in the front row went wild. They dropped to their knees in the mud.
Their hands flew through Hand Seals so fast they left afterimages. All ten fingers plunged deep into the cold, wet earth.
"Earth Release: Moving Earth Core!"
The ground began to shake violently. A trench hundreds of meters long sank into the level earth.
Soil churned and surged to either side, instantly forming tall breakwaters.
Sweat dripped from the Earth Release ninjas' foreheads and fell into the mud. Their Chakra was being squeezed out at a frantic rate.
The Uchiha Urban Management Brigade spread out.
More than a hundred pairs of Sharingan flickered in the thick fog, fixed on every person at work.
"Faster! Has your Chakra not eaten?" Kagami Uchiha shouted from atop a mound of earth.
The moment he opened his mouth, wind rushed into his throat and made him cough twice.
Kagami quickly steadied his voice and pointed his sword tip at the deep pit below.
"If you can't level the foundation, you're all going in to fill the pit!"
At the bottom of the pit, Akimichi Chōza gritted his teeth, the fat all over his body trembling. He activated the Multi-Size Technique.
He became a five-meter-tall giant, lifted a two-ton solid wooden piling in both hands, and drove it hard into the mud.
The piling sank three feet into the earth, shaking loose stones off the edge of the pit.
The skin on Chōza's palms had been rubbed raw, and splinters had pierced his flesh.
He only dared suck in a breath before pulling up a second piling and carrying on.
Beside him, a Chunin overtaxed his Chakra. His eyes rolled back, and he fainted in the mud.
Two Uchiha Jōkan strode over. They seized the man by the collar and hauled him up.
A low-quality Military Rations Pill was shoved roughly into the Chunin's mouth.
Then a hand cracked across his face. Smack!
The Chunin jolted awake, retched twice, and grabbed a shovel to keep digging.
The Fire Style ninja were driven over to an earthen kiln on the other side.
"Breathe fire! Don't stop until it's hot enough!" An Uchiha Jōkan lashed the ground behind them with a whip.
Dozens of Great Fireballs smashed into the kiln. The red glow from the firing bricks lit up half the sky.
Nearby, Water Release ninja shouldered thick iron pipes and desperately pumped water into the cooling pool.
The entire worksite was instantly bustling. The mechanical roar of Ninjutsu mingled with the overseers' shouted curses.
Dust filled the air, choking people until tears streamed from their eyes.
At the very edge of the wasteland, where the mud was deepest, stood Hiruzen Sarutobi.
His fine suit of ninja armor had long since been stripped off him.
Now he wore a rough, torn hemp garment. The hemp threads at the collar had chafed the skin on his neck raw, drawing tiny beads of blood.
He had no shoes. His bare feet stood in slush-filled mud, numb from the cold.
A large, crude iron shovel had been forced into his hands. Its handle was worn and splintered.
Hiruzen's hands were covered in blisters. Two had already burst, and yellow fluid mixed with black mud across his palms.
Every time he moved a finger, piercing pain shot up his nerves.
One shovelful. Two.
He mechanically dug at the heavy, wet mud. His lower back ached as if it had broken in two.
He tried to quietly refine a little Chakra to ease the ache in his muscles.
A whip immediately struck his back, hard.
"Put that Chakra away! Save it for pushing carts this afternoon!" The Uchiha Genin overseeing him glared fiercely at him.
Hiruzen sucked in a sharp breath and numbly raised his head.
Everything before him was like an absurd nightmare.
He saw Yamanaka Fūshin, who had once been so arrogant at the conference table.
Fūshin was crouched in the mud, marking out the factory buildings' boundary lines with lime powder, his back bent like a shrimp.
He saw dozens of elders from the Hyuga Main Family. Carrying heavy bamboo baskets, they picked through piles of broken stone for scrap like dogs.
Their Byakugan were pushed to the limit, all to find a single defective firebrick.
Uchiha leather whips cracked thunderously over their heads.
Anyone who fell a step behind got a bloody welt across the back.
Hiruzen's mouth hung open. His throat was dry.
The ninja system he had been so proud of. The families that represented glory, heritage, and the Will of Fire.
All of it was ruined.
Now all that remained was a group of laborers rolling around in the mud.
They did not even dare complain.
The head that had rolled across the square yesterday. His father's eyes, still open in death. They spun wildly through his mind.
Hiruzen's hands began to tremble violently.
The iron shovel handle knocked against his hands with a faint clatter.
His knees went weak beyond his control.
Thud.
Both knees crashed into the mud, splashing filthy water across his face.
He looked at the black figure on the distant raised platform, its back to him.
His mental defenses collapsed completely.
Both hands clutched his mud-caked hair. His nails dug into his scalp, drawing thin streaks of blood.
Hiruzen raised his head and shouted at the gray-white sky.