Orochimaru nodded his head like a pestle pounding garlic.
He had heard the words, "Let the other four ninja villages experience a dimensionality reduction strike."
The veins on his neck bulged with excitement.
"Dimensionality reduction strike... Yes, a dimensionality reduction strike!" Orochimaru's voice had gone completely hoarse.
He scrambled over to the sheet-metal console.
His straw sandal caught on a cable. He stumbled, but didn't bother steadying himself, pressing both hands firmly against the notebook beside the control lever.
His charcoal pencil flew across the paper, recording the mecha's hydraulic data.
The tip snapped and tore through the paper. He picked up the broken stub and kept writing. Graphite stained the spaces beneath his fingernails black.
Shu Shiraishi paid the madman no further attention.
He turned around and slipped his hands back into his trouser pockets.
His military boots thudded against the steel-framed walkway, sending out a dull metallic echo.
He climbed down the iron ladder. His figure disappeared beyond the glare of the searchlights.
Half a month later.
Western Konoha. No. 1 Arsenal.
Towering red-brick smokestacks belched black smoke.
The air was thick with the acrid smell of gunpowder and the pungent scent of machine oil.
Six enormous ventilation fans whirred atop the massive factory building, unable to exhaust all the heat rising from below.
In the center of the factory, two fifty-meter-long steel assembly lines were running.
The conveyor belts meshed with the gears, producing a monotonous creaking.
Hundreds of ninja in gray work clothes stood on either side of the assembly lines.
Before, these people had spent their days throwing Kunai in the woods. The calluses on their palms had all come from practicing Hand Seals.
Now, their faces were smeared with black grease, and they held cast-iron wrenches and screwdrivers.
A civilian Genin was looking down, aligning a thick gun barrel.
The barrel was too heavy, and his sweaty palms lost their grip.
Clang.
The barrel struck the assembly line's iron surface, shattering a wooden strip used as a support.
The Genin jumped in fright and hurriedly wiped the dust off the barrel with his sleeve.
The machine oil on his sleeve smeared across his face. His nose tickled, and he let out an enormous sneeze.
Uchiha Jōkan, who was in charge of quality control nearby, walked over.
Jōkan frowned. The red Sharingan turned once in his eyes.
He picked up a vernier caliper and measured the threads on the barrel.
"The tolerance is off by two millimeters." Jōkan tapped the iron surface with his pen. He didn't hit anyone.
"Send it back and grind it again. If the barrel bursts, are you taking responsibility?"
The Genin quickly lowered his head and admitted his mistake. He picked up the barrel and ran back, the veins standing out on the backs of his hands.
This was the norm in Konoha now.
Strict industrial standards had replaced the old, intuition-based forging of ninja tools.
The Uchiha's Sharingan were used to spot product defects, and they worked better than any testing instrument.
At the end of the assembly line,
fully assembled weapons were being wheeled out one after another.
Chakra Maxim heavy machine guns.
Their thick black barrels were encased in large iron jackets for water cooling.
Their bases were heavy cast-iron tripods.
The casings had not been finely polished, and rough, fish-scale weld seams remained, scraping against the hand.
Shu Shiraishi entered the factory.
Two Anbu carrying ledgers followed behind him.
He wore a dark gray jacket today, its collar open.
The factory was loud. He said nothing, simply walking slowly along the assembly line.
The workers moved much more briskly when they saw the Hokage, turning their wrenches at speed.
Shu Shiraishi passed through the assembly area and came to the finished ammunition depot at the back of the factory.
The Anbu pushed open the enormous sheet-metal doors.
The bearings were short of oil and gave a piercing squeal of friction.
Piles of wooden crates filled his view.
The crates were stacked higher than the ceiling beams, all the way to the back of the warehouse, blocking the windows in the rear wall.
The warehouse was dim, and the distinctive musky smell of sealing ink hung in the air.
Shu Shiraishi walked up to the nearest stack of crates.
"EXTREME DANGER" was painted in large red characters on the wooden crate's surface, the edges of the lettering slightly blurred.
He reached out and pinched the brass latch on the edge of the crate between his thumb and forefinger.
He wrenched it hard.
Snap. The latch sprang open.
Shu Shiraishi lifted the heavy wooden lid.
Inside, thousands of Chakra bullets were neatly packed.
These weren't gunpowder bullets.
They were crystals Orochimaru had compressed from low-grade Chakra ore.
The blue crystals gave off a cold glow in the dim warehouse.
A miniature yellow Explosive Tag the size of a fingernail was attached to the tail of each bullet.
Shu Shiraishi scooped up a handful.
The icy crystals knocked together in his palm with a crisp rustle.
Their edges had been cut neatly, and every round was identical in size and weight.
"What's the current output?" Shu Shiraishi asked.
The Anbu behind him opened the hardbound ledger and ran a finger down the page.
"Lord Hokage," the Anbu replied, swallowing, his voice a little shaky.
"Maxim heavy machine guns: three hundred and twenty in storage."
"Chakra armor-piercing rounds: two million."
Shu Shiraishi nodded and opened his hand.
The bullets slipped through his fingers and clattered back into the crate.
More than three hundred heavy machine guns. Two million armor-piercing rounds.
That was only half a month's production.
Once the No. 2 blast furnace and the stamping workshop were fully brought online, that figure could triple again.
Shu Shiraishi closed the crate.
He looked at the warehouse full of weapons and ammunition, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
Konoha's armed forces had completely left the age of cold weapons behind.
What were the other four ninja villages still playing with?
Iwagakure's ninja were bare-chested, practicing their punches on big rocks.
Sunagakure was playing with puppets in the desert. A few pieces of lousy wood and some poison-tipped Kunai.
Kumogakure was still practicing that Lightning Release Armor. Train for decades to become impervious to blades and bullets?
Too slow. And too stupid.
It took twenty years to train a Jonin capable of holding his own on the battlefield.
It required exceptional talent, guidance from a great teacher, and countless trials of life and death.
But making a heavy machine gun only required the assembly line to run for two hours.
Grab any Genin with a pitifully small amount of Chakra.
Sit him down behind a machine gun and teach him how to pull the trigger.
In one minute, he could spray thousands of armor-piercing rounds capable of tearing an Earth Style Wall apart.
He could blast those Jonin who had trained hard for thirty years straight into steaming piles of mangled flesh.
This was industrialization's ruthless crushing of the small-farm economy.
Before a storm of steel, flesh and blood didn't even amount to a joke.
Shu Shiraishi left the ammunition depot.
He returned to the firearms assembly area.
He walked up to a flatbed cart.
A Maxim heavy machine gun fresh off the line rested on it. Its body still held the warmth of welding and gave off a smell of scorched iron.
Shu Shiraishi reached out with his right hand and gripped the black handle.
The wooden grip had been sanded roughly and was a little prickly.
That hefty physical weight was more reassuring than all those flashy Ninjutsu.
He reached for the charging handle on the side of the gun with his left hand.
The thick iron bolt sat in a groove in the guide rail, coated with bright yellow lubricant.
He put strength into his wrist and yanked it back.
Clack.
Metal struck metal with a crisp mechanical sound. The recoil spring was compressed to its limit.
The sound was clean and sharp, with no sticking.
That showed the tolerances were controlled extremely well.
Shu Shiraishi prepared to let go and listen to the firing pin reset.
Suddenly,
a piercing shriek tore through the mechanical noise of the arsenal without warning.
"Wooo-!!!"
The sound came from the tall communications tower outside the factory grounds.
Shrill and piercing.
Like the scream of some dying beast, its sound waves set the factory's glass windows humming.
It was an air raid alarm.
It was the highest-level alarm, found only in the radar monitoring room where Yamanaka Fūshin worked.
It was the first time it had sounded in the half month since the factory was built.
The red warning lights atop the factory came on instantly.
"Swish! Swish! Swish!"
Dazzling red light flashed wildly across the walls, staining the entire workshop bloodred.
The workers on the assembly lines all stopped.
A wrench fell from a Genin's hand and clanged against an iron plate.
Everyone looked up, their faces full of terror as they stared out the windows.
The alarm continued to rise, assaulting everyone's eardrums.
Shu Shiraishi's hand, gripping the bolt, stopped in midair.
His eyelid twitched.
He let go.
Snap.
The iron bolt sprang back into place with a dull metallic impact.
A beam of red warning light swept across his face.
There was no panic on that cold, hard face, only irritation at having his inspection interrupted.
He turned and looked outside the main doors.
The red light spun wildly around the factory grounds, and the piercing, mournful sound filled the sky over all of Konoha.