Put the Akimichi to Work Hauling Bricks-It Would Be a Waste Not to Use the Multi-Size Technique
Shu Shiraishi's voice pierced the lingering white steam.
It rang out over the noisy hammering of iron.
Beside a mud pit two hundred meters from the blast furnace,
Akimichi Chōza was sitting on two empty sandbags stacked atop each other.
He held more than half a steamed white-flour bun in his hand. Several dark, sooty handprints marked its surface.
Chōza was starving. He opened his mouth wide and bit off half the bun.
He had barely chewed the dry, hard dough twice
when Shu's shout of "Get over here!" hit his ears.
Chōza shuddered all over.
His throat tightened. The mouthful of dry bun lodged right in it.
His face turned bright red as he desperately pounded his chest with both hands.
"Cough, cough!"
The rest of the bun slipped from his hand and landed with a splat in the black mud at his feet.
Chōza looked ruefully at the bun in the mud.
He couldn't stop to pick it up.
He braced both hands on the sandbags and struggled to his feet.
His two thick, short legs pumping furiously, he scrambled toward the blast furnace.
He was too fat. The muddy ground was as slippery as if it had been greased.
Halfway there, his left foot came down on a round stone.
Chōza's massive body pitched forward, and he slid two meters through the mud.
His chin struck a stone slab, scraping off some skin.
He didn't even dare cry out in pain.
He rolled over, scrambled up, and kept running with a hand pressed to his chin.
Cold sweat streamed down his fleshy cheeks, washing the dirt into dark streaks.
"L-Lord Hokage!"
Chōza reached Shu and stopped short.
He bent over with both hands planted firmly on his knees, gasping for air, his lungs wheezing like bellows.
The mouthful of bun was still stuck in his throat, making his eyes roll back repeatedly.
Shu paid no attention to his sorry state.
He raised his right hand and pointed to the special steel plate that had just been removed from its mold.
It was ten meters long and half a meter thick.
Its surface gleamed with a cold, bluish-black metallic sheen.
The heat still radiating from it warped the air around it.
A strong smell of rust and scorching wafted from it.
"Move it over there."
Shu tilted his chin toward the deep foundation trench that had just been dug three hundred meters away.
"Lay it flat."
Chōza looked in the direction he was pointing.
He swallowed dryly, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty twice.
That solid steel plate weighed at least a dozen tons.
He turned and glanced at several sets of wooden pulleys that had just been assembled nearby.
The hemp ropes were only as thick as a finger.
If he used those pulleys, it would take until nightfall to pull the plate over.
"My lord."
Chōza's voice was faint, and his legs shook uncontrollably.
"I... It's too heavy. We need a hoist..."
Shu turned his head and looked at him.
He said nothing.
Uchiha Tai, standing nearby, took half a step forward.
His right eye was still bleeding, and his left hand had already closed around the hilt of his straight sword.
He pushed with his thumb, exposing an inch of cold, gleaming blade.
Chōza swallowed the rest of his words.
"I'll move it! I'll move it right now!"
He took two steps back and slapped his fleshy cheeks hard with both hands.
The slaps spread the cold sweat and mud a little more evenly.
Chōza drew a deep breath of the scorched air.
His chest swelled high.
He pressed his palms together before his chest, his ten thick fingers quickly interlocking.
Chakra surged wildly through his body.
"Super Multi-Size Technique!"
Chōza roared.
His body expanded violently in an instant, like a hide raft being inflated to its limit.
The short gray hemp garment he wore gave a tortured cry.
Rrrip!
His clothes burst into pieces, strips of cloth flying everywhere.
Only the specially made, oversized wrapping cloth around his waist still covered him.
Two meters. Five meters. Ten meters.
Chōza became a giant mountain of flesh over ten meters tall.
His towering shadow instantly covered the nearby blast furnace, engulfing Shu completely.
All the ninja working nearby stopped what they were doing.
One by one, they craned their necks and stared blankly at the giant who had risen from the ground.
This was the Akimichi Clan's secret technique, a killing machine normally used to crush enemy formations on the battlefield.
Chōza, transformed into a giant, lowered his head.
From his current perspective, the enormous steel plate, weighing over ten tons, looked like a long, rectangular biscuit.
He bent down.
He reached out with both hands, each several sizes larger than a water vat.
His fingers gripped the edges on either side of the plate.
Sizzle-
The heat remaining in the plate burned his palms, sending up a cloud of white smoke.
Chōza gritted his teeth and sucked in a sharp breath.
The muscles in his arms bulged. His thick arms, like two pillars holding up the sky, strained with a sudden burst of force.
"Up!"
A low roar rumbled from Chōza's throat.
He forcibly lifted the special steel plate, weighing over ten tons, off the ground.
He used no lifting equipment at all, relying entirely on sheer physical strength.
He turned the plate over and settled it securely on his broad right shoulder.
The heavy weight bore down on him.
Chōza's knees bent slightly.
Boom!
He took his first step.
His enormous foot slammed into the mud, leaving a huge pit half a meter deep.
Muddy water sprayed in every direction like a fountain, spattering an Uchiha city management officer nearby from head to toe.
Chōza couldn't stop to apologize.
Carrying the smoking steel plate, he walked step by step toward the foundation three hundred meters away.
The ground trembled rhythmically with each step he took.
A Genin pushing a wheelbarrow of earth nearby was shaken off balance and landed on his backside.
When he reached the edge of the foundation,
Chōza bent his legs and lowered himself into a half squat.
Holding both ends of the steel plate, he carefully lowered it into the deep trench as though placing a building block.
Thud.
A dull impact sounded.
The ten-meter-long solid steel plate fit snugly into the foundation, all four corners level and steady.
There wasn't even an error of a few millimeters.
After setting down the plate, Chōza released the Multi-Size Technique.
His body shrank like a deflating balloon, returning him to his original fat appearance.
Bare-chested and exhausted, he plopped down beside the foundation, gasping for breath. Two enormous, shiny red blisters had formed on his palms.
Shu stood beside the blast furnace.
He looked at the steel plate laid in the foundation and nodded.
That efficiency was who knew how many times greater than a crawler crane's in his previous life.
He turned around.
His gaze swept over the other Akimichi clansmen still pushing carts and digging on the worksite.
"Members of the Akimichi Clan."
Shu raised his voice.
"All of you, grow bigger."
"Before nightfall today, put up the steel framework for workshop one."
Dozens of fat men on the worksite looked at one another.
Use the Multi-Size Technique to carry steel beams?
This was a secret technique that consumed Chakra and calories. A day of hauling bricks could drain a person dry.
"Can't you hear him?"
Kagami Uchiha drew his short sword and struck an Akimichi Chunin hard across the back with its spine.
"Standing around staring because you've got nothing better to do! Get to work!"
Dozens of city management officers wearing red armbands immediately surrounded them, cracking their whips in the air.
The Akimichi clansmen trembled with fright.
They all reached into their ninja tool pouches and pulled out handfuls of high-calorie Military Rations Pills and pieces of candy.
They stuffed them into their mouths and swallowed without even chewing them properly.
"Super Multi-Size Technique!"
"Partial Multi-Size Technique!"
Dozens of shouts rang out one after another across the worksite.
A breathtaking scene unfolded.
On the formerly chaotic worksite, dozens of giant mountains of flesh, each over ten meters tall, rose from the ground in an instant.
Like a herd of ancient beasts, they filled the entire construction site.
Two Akimichi giants walked up to the second steel plate, which had just come out of the furnace.
Each grabbed one end, calling out in unison.
"One, two, lift!"
They carried it away with ease.
A Genin who knew the Partial Multi-Size Technique made both his arms as thick as tree trunks.
He picked up the base of a stamping machine weighing five tons.
He strode to the center of the workshop and set it down steadily.
The heavy labor that would normally have required over a hundred ordinary workers to put up scaffolding and haul together to shouted counts for most of a day
was finished in minutes by these giants.
Efficiency soared by geometric multiples.
Yamanaka Fūshin was crouching on the ground, drawing white lines.
A giant footprint suddenly landed half a foot in front of him, nearly crushing his head.
Fūshin dropped his chalk in fright and scrambled to safety.
He watched the fat men racing across the worksite with steel beams weighing over ten tons on their shoulders.
Then he looked at the Uchiha city management officers nearby, holding blueprints and directing the giants where to put things.
Fūshin wiped the cold sweat from his face.
This was hardly building a house. It was like Kuafu from the myths building a city.
Construction across the entire Konoha Heavy Industry Base proceeded as if someone had pressed fast-forward.
Every ten minutes, another thick steel column was planted in the foundation.
The roar of blast furnaces. The footsteps of giants. The shouts and curses of city inspectors.
They intertwined into a rough industrial symphony.
Shu Shiraishi stood atop an unexcavated mound of earth.
From his vantage point, he looked down at the bustling construction site.
The steel skeleton of Factory No. 1 was already taking shape.
Black steel beams crisscrossed beneath the gloomy sky, giving off a cold, hard mechanical beauty.
It had been forged with the blood, sweat, and Chakra of countless ninjas.
Shu Shiraishi took off his white gloves.
He slapped them against his trouser leg a few times, knocking off the coal ash clinging to them.
"The hardware is more or less ready."
He looked at the blast furnaces and machinery still running at full tilt.
"All it needs now is brains."
Without top technical talent, all this steel and concrete was just a pile of dead matter. It couldn't produce weapons capable of dimensionality-reduction strikes.
Shu Shiraishi turned his head.
An Anbu wearing a cat mask knelt silently on one knee behind him, like a shadow.
"Go to the orphanage at the west end of the village."
Shu Shiraishi looked at the Anbu's mask, his voice cold.
"That boy named Orochimaru."
He tucked his white gloves back into his pocket.
"Bring him to Temporary Laboratory No. 1."
"Tie him up if you have to."