"Ow! Let go! I was just passing by!"
A distorted scream came from outside the door.
It was high-pitched, cracking in the way only an adolescent boy's voice could.
"Bang!"
The wooden door to Temporary Laboratory No. 1 was kicked open.
The flimsy door gave a groan as it slammed into the earthen wall, shaking loose a shower of dry dust.
A cold wind swept sand and dirt into the room.
An Anbu Ninja wearing a cat mask stepped over the threshold.
His right hand gripped a fistful of someone's loose back collar.
He dragged the person along like a disobedient stray dog.
When he reached the middle of the wooden building, the Anbu let go.
"Thud."
A boy with a conspicuous head of white hair hit the floor like a sack full of potatoes.
He landed hard, his chin striking the rough wooden boards.
One of his red wooden clogs flew off and struck the leg of the table in front of Shu Shiraishi with a dull thud.
The clog spun twice on the floor before coming to a stop.
"Lord Hokage, I caught a peeping tom."
The Anbu knelt on one knee, his voice cold and flat.
Jiraiya lay sprawled on the floor.
Splinters from the boards dug into his flailing palms. He sucked in a sharp breath and hurriedly rolled over and sat up.
He fumbled to pull the splinters from his palms.
A large patch of the red paint on his cheeks had rubbed against the floor.
It was smeared across his right cheek in a red blotch, making him look like a cheap clown.
"I wasn't peeping!"
Jiraiya shouted, craning his neck. He waved both hands wildly, stirring up the sour stench of sweat.
"I was just... looking for a cat! Yeah, the old lady on the west side of the village lost her cat! I followed the wall looking for it!"
His eyes darted around, never daring to look at the man in front of him.
Shu Shiraishi sat in a wooden chair.
He looked down at the white-haired boy spouting nonsense.
He said nothing.
The room suddenly fell silent.
The only sound was the scratch of Tsunade writing rapidly on parchment by the microscope.
She did not even look up, completely undisturbed by the farce. The phagocytic reaction of the Hashirama Cells in the microscopic world was far more interesting than this idiot.
Shu Shiraishi did not speak.
Through the silent air, the oppressive pressure rose like water, engulfing Jiraiya up to his neck.
Jiraiya's voice grew quieter and quieter, until it was barely a mosquito's hum.
Cold sweat poured down his back, plastering his undershirt against the groove of his spine.
He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing violently twice.
"I... I really was just passing by..."
Shu Shiraishi picked up the standard-issue Anbu short blade on the table.
The blood on the blade had long since dried into a dark red crust.
He scraped his thumbnail across its surface.
It made a dry, harsh scratching sound.
"This blade just opened a vein on a Kumogakure prisoner of war."
Shu Shiraishi spoke evenly.
As if he were discussing what to eat for lunch.
He flicked his wrist and tossed the blade forward.
"Clang."
The short blade landed on the floor between Jiraiya's legs.
Its tip sank half an inch into the wood, its hilt still quivering. It was less than three fingers' width from his vital spot.
"Whichever leg you used to step onto the windowsill, cut it off yourself."
Shu Shiraishi leaned back in his chair.
Jiraiya reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
He clapped both hands over his crotch and scrambled a long way backward.
The back of his head struck the Anbu's knee.
"Thud!"
His knees gave out, and he dropped straight onto the wood-shaving-covered floor.
He knocked his head down hard, making the boards thump.
"Lord Hokage, spare me! I was wrong!"
Jiraiya wailed, tears and snot streaming down his face.
"I only wanted a look at Tsunade! I didn't even see a single hair on her head!"
With both hands on the floor, he crawled and scrambled forward.
"I didn't see anything! Really! The crack in the window was too small, and a bug even bit me!"
Jiraiya babbled incoherent excuses.
He was terrified that if he were a second too late, the blade would cut into his leg.
Shu Shiraishi let out a cold laugh.
In the original story, Jiraiya was a notorious troublemaker and womanizer.
Breaking his legs would be useless. Even from a hospital bed, he would find a way to peep at the nurses.
To deal with someone like him, he had to be drained mentally.
"What's your name?" Shu Shiraishi asked.
"Jiraiya! Jiraiya, a commoner Genin!"
He raised his dust-covered face, his eyes red-rimmed.
"My lord, I'm useful! Don't cut off my leg!"
His mind raced as he desperately searched for a way to prove his worth.
"I... I've written little stories for the village before!"
"The neighbors all say I write well. I made up the biography of that widow on the east side of the village, and the unofficial history of the Daimyo of the Land of Lightning too!"
He patted his thin chest.
"My writing can really fool people. Keep me around, and I'll write your biography!"
Shu Shiraishi's fingers stopped tapping on the table.
"You write well?"
Konoha was now making a full-scale transition to heavy industrialization.
The lower-ranking ninja were accustomed to taking missions and killing people, and they could not change their way of thinking overnight.
They thought mixing concrete was degrading and firing boilers was shameful.
For building machines, there was Orochimaru.
For brainwashing, he was just short of a shameless hack.
Shu Shiraishi looked at the white-haired boy kneeling on the floor.
Wasn't this a ready-made wastepaper basket?
"Anbu," Shu Shiraishi said.
"Here." The ninja behind him stiffened.
"Take him to the windowless storage room next door."
Shu Shiraishi pointed outside.
"Lock the door from the outside."
Jiraiya's mouth fell open.
Tears had washed two pale streaks through the red paint on his face.
"L-lock it?"
"Give him a table, a stack of paper, and a writing brush in there."
Shu Shiraishi leaned forward, pressing both hands against the edge of the table.
"Write ten thousand characters for me every day."
Jiraiya froze.
Ten thousand characters?
When he wrote those little stories about widows, he counted himself lucky if he could squeeze out five hundred characters in a day.
Ten thousand would surely break his wrist!
"Title it 'Ode to Konoha Heavy Industries.'"
Shu Shiraishi's hard voice continued to hammer down.
"And 'Quotations of Emperor Shu Shiraishi.'"
"Make machines the true gods of the Shinobi World. Make mixing concrete and mining coal the greatest undertakings. Redirect the Will of Fire toward the torrent of steel."
Jiraiya clawed at the floor, his nails scraping white marks into the boards.
"I... I don't know how to write an ode..." Desperate tears colored his voice.
"If you can't write it, make it up. If you can't make it up, copy the blueprint instructions."
Shu Shiraishi paid no attention to his tears.
"Every evening at eight, the Anbu will collect your manuscript."
"One character short, and you go hungry for a day. One character wrong, and you get ten strokes of the rod."
Jiraiya felt as though the sky had fallen.
He would rather get beaten up by his teacher at the training ground a hundred times than be locked in a little dark room as a writing machine.
"Ten thousand characters will kill me! Lord Hokage! You might as well cut off my leg!"
He lunged for Shu Shiraishi's boots.
"Take him away." Shu Shiraishi lifted his foot out of reach in disgust.
The Anbu stepped forward.
A large hand seized Jiraiya by the back of his collar and lifted him up.
The Anbu headed for the door, dragging him like a bag of trash.
"I'm not going! Let go of me!"
Jiraiya kicked wildly with his remaining foot, his sole scraping shrilly against the boards.
"Tsunade, save me! Help-"
He clung to the doorframe and refused to let go.
Expressionless, the Anbu raised his boot and stepped on the back of Jiraiya's hand.
"Aow!"
Jiraiya cried out and let go, and was forcibly dragged out the door.
His screams receded across the muddy ground outside.
Then a heavy door slammed next door, followed by the crisp click of a large iron lock being fastened.
The wailing was completely shut behind the thick wooden boards.
The wooden building was quiet again.
Tsunade was still sitting at the microscope, without so much as lifting an eyelid.
She quickly recorded a series of reaction data on the parchment. She had no interest in even looking as the peeping tom was dragged away.
Inside the little dark room next door.
The light was dim.
Only a battered kerosene lamp burned at the corner of the table, its yellow flame no bigger than a bean.
The window had long since been nailed shut with boards, letting in not a breath of air.
Jiraiya sat on a wooden stool with half a leg missing.
A stack of rough white paper half a foot thick lay before him.
He clutched a battered, balding writing brush. Its handle was covered in his teeth marks and nearly split.
"The great... steel gears... turn the hopes of Konoha..."
Sobbing, he wrote the crooked characters on the paper.
Tears ran down the bridge of his nose.
They landed on the paper before the ink had dried, spreading into dark blotches.
"Boo-hoo... This is awful."
He sniffled and rubbed his aching right wrist with his left hand.
He had barely stopped writing and caught his breath for two seconds.
A dull knocking came from outside as a knife hilt struck the wooden door.
"Thud. Thud."
"Eight thousand characters left. Don't slack off." The Anbu's icy voice came through the door.
Jiraiya shuddered in fright.
He hurriedly gripped the brush again and desperately dipped it twice into the ink in the chipped inkstone.
His head nearly disappeared into the pile of papers.
He looked like a laborer hunched over a sewing machine on an assembly line in a sweatshop.
He wrote furiously. Ink splattered onto his cheeks, mixing with the red paint, but he had no time to wipe it off.
The sun gradually climbed higher.
Deafening pile-driving echoed from the construction site outside.
Shu Shiraishi stood up.
He brushed the flecks of wood shavings off his black trousers.
Tsunade handled the biochemical agents, Orochimaru handled the Chakra heavy machine gun, and Jiraiya handled the brainwashing copy.
The team had come together under the weight of authority.
He stepped over the threshold and out of the temporary laboratory.
A cold wind hit him, carrying the acrid stench of electric welding.
Shu Shiraishi walked across the hard, dry earth toward the row of makeshift buildings housing the machine tool workshop.
He had just rounded a pile of discarded red bricks.
Several people came toward him.
Hatake Sakumo led them.
He had just returned from a mission to wipe out wandering samurai along the border.
His gray tactical vest had three or four long gashes, with white cotton stuffing spilling out.
His trouser legs were covered in half-dried, dark red bloody mud.
As he walked, a strong smell of blood spread through the cold wind.
Sakumo saw Shu Shiraishi.
He immediately stopped and knelt on one knee in the frosty dirt.
The bloody mud on his knee rubbed off against a stone.
"Lord Hokage, the bandit camp has been cleared out," Sakumo said with his head lowered, his voice weary.
Shu Shiraishi stopped walking.
He did not look at Sakumo's bloodstained face.
His gaze dropped.
It landed on the sword at Sakumo's waist.
It was the White Fang Short Sword, a weapon passed down through the Hatake Clan.
The sword was unsheathed.
Its blade was riddled with chips the size of soybeans.
The cutting edge was badly rolled, with a few strands of blackened flesh caught on it.
It looked like a battered saw that had been smashed against a rock.