Capítulo 2719: 109
Designing, prototyping, testing, identifying problems, and repeating for a satellite design had gone amazingly quickly. Mostly because Naruto kept grabbing the designs, building a dozen, testing them, and dropping reports on the technology division before they'd finished building their first prototype of each design. Three out of four they'd not even started building the prototype. Through this, over the course of a few months they'd finally gotten something they saw as suitable.
He'd taken that design as a base appearance, redesigned it from the inside out, and made enough to create an orbital communications grid that looked like their final design on the surface. Internally the satellites were significantly expanded, had mana reactors for generating hundreds of times more energy on demand, and were in general far more capable than anyone was likely to expect. He'd tested them firing spell bullets while maintaining a shield bubble while they were unobserved in another dimension, meaning that the 'communications grid' was just as usable as a line of defense in case of invaders.
It was also far better at scanning the planet for problems, served as a global positioning network, and was probably forty times more efficient at the original communications grid than the original design had been due to the way he interconnected everything.
The technology division had grumbled about him putting in twice as many as they thought were needed as well, as they claimed that they'd already put in sufficient redundancies so him doubling the numbers again was ridiculous. He'd just not told them that his numbers were based on the currently-secret planetary defense functionality and not on all the stuff they cared about.
Testing showed that Wame's telescope spell worked from the grid as well, allowing for an Earthscope instead of a Moonscope, but that was one of many projects that he wasn't telling people about. Just like the beginnings of a satellite grid around the Sun.
All of that had been a decent side project while gradually working on finishing up the moon, and they had a few more things to take care of before the first couple of 'big events' involving it.
Yoko had finished modifying the flying shrine island to have two domes. One always in place on top to cover the whole surface where the shrines sat and a retractable half-dome that would cover a new visitor area on the side of the island, below the 'surface' level a little above the water line when the island was floating instead of flying. The new area also had a deployable dock so that you could travel to the island by ship while it was sitting on the water, though you had to have the ships leave and retract the floating dock before the island could take off into the air safely.
Creating a set of shrine shuttles had also been taken care of, for getting to and from the island more efficiently on the planet and on the moon. These were on the surface far less capable than Hinata's larger models that were intended to be able to make the complete trip from planet to moon and back. In reality they were probably far more capable as she and Naruto seemed to be the only ones building things bigger on the inside, even if some of the things they'd done that with didn't look like they'd done that.
She had two priests in mind for running the shrine complexes on the moon, all of the structures were built, the various honden were strategically placed for interaction with the surroundings such as farms, and it would only be a few weeks before they would be ready for people to start moving in if they wanted to. Naruto was working on the list of people looking to make the move, which seemed to include a large number of scientists and their families, not that it would be difficult to get back and forth with transport pads.
Unfortunately, she had to deal with scheduling and figuring out how to handle a sane 'guest list' for the trip. Leaders of several countries, if not every single one she'd been dealing with in any capacity at all, would be very annoyed if there wasn't a good reason for them to be along for the trip. Beyond, of course, the fact that she had ensured that there was a limited capacity for the flying island itself.
Kurotsuchi was a little annoyed at how few diplomatic events were suitable to send her grandfather to instead of attending herself. The battle of the bands thing had been perfect, and he'd volunteered to attend the opening of a store in the capital selling shinobi-made foods. Unfortunately, the more 'official' the event the harder it was to justify not attending herself. She couldn't even bring him along for most of those, which was aggravating on its own.
Admittedly, she was reasonably certain that they'd found all of his hidden workshops in and around the village. He was just skilled enough to make more even if they had found them all, so keeping him 'useful' was one of the better ways to keep him from causing major problems. It helped that there was a lot less pressure to be 'strong' from a military point of view these days, thanks to the assumption that nobody was standing up to Uzushio anyway. Not that he saw it that way, of course, which was the problem.
She'd also be far less annoyed if he wasn't running his experiments in and around the village. Uzushio did their testing on out of the way islands, and there were plenty of uninhabited mountains in the Land of Earth her grandfather could run off to for his experiments, but he was stupidly doing them right under her nose. What he was working on wasn't going to be doing anything remotely like he wanted it to regarding their relative strength, but at least being in the middle of nowhere would help with containment when things inevitably went wrong.
"Good morning," Naruto greeted the other village leaders. "Big crowd for an exam opening."
"I'm a bit surprised at that myself," A admitted. "Maybe if you were running the exam, but Uzushio seems content to let everyone else officially run them."
"We get paid more that way since nobody wants to run a chunin exam without renting the island."
"And yet it costs less to rent the island than to run an exam without it," Shisui pointed out. "Thanks to all the automation you've put in and the lack of needing extra security on the hosting village."
"You're not generally one to show up last though," Gaara pointed out, several others nodding in agreement.
Naruto nodded. "I figured I could slap together some information packets, since enough village leaders were going to be present today anyway, but that can wait until after the gathered genin have been given their initial instructions."
The actual process of starting the 'do you qualify to be genin' phase of things took half an hour, plus another ten minutes for everyone to clear out of the arena.
"So what new insanity have you come up with?" Kurotsuchi asked. "Because if it's something else I can send my grandfather to in order to keep him from meddling with things then I'd appreciate it. Far too many things require my personal presence."
"Ah," Naruto said, shrugging. "Not much hope of that." A gesture released a stack of envelopes from a seal, and chakra threads floated one to each leader. "I just decided that the official opening ceremonies on the moon needed to be just a little more comprehensive than you might be expecting."
"...opening ceremonies?" Mei asked, frowning.
"We're moving some people in to get settled ahead of time, but a special trip to enshrine gods is just the beginning. I've invited a larger number of bands for another performance before the first international jounin exams begin." That had the entire group staring at him for a moment, and he grinned. "Information is in the packets, including all the documentation for why no additional treaty is needed. If you're here then you qualify to send chunin to participate."
"Hold up," A said. "You're hosting jounin exams on the moon?"
"Yes. Were you not paying attention, or do I need to schedule some time with a medic-nin to have your hearing checked?"
"I think he's more shocked at the location than anything else," Shisui commented. Of course, he was the only one present that had gotten any warning at all, and that had only been during a quick chat this morning.
Naruto gestured around them. "This island is barely large enough to hold 'are you worthy of being called a chunin' testing. For proper jounin testing you need a lot more room, and Uzushio has more territory than anyone else right now."
The truth of that statement hit the group a moment later, Shisui included. It seemed that nobody had considered that 'building a new moon' implied 'owns the new moon'. Of course, they also controlled all access to it, the computer systems inside of it, and nobody else had any way to even begin contesting said ownership in any meaningful way.
Funny how the little island nation now dwarfed every other nation on the planet without needing to wage war for territory.
"I don't see why you'd want to perform experiments on the moon," Orochi said after putting Mito down for her nap, frowning at what had been brought up before that. Wasn't she supposed to be the 'mad scientist' type in this relationship?
"There are intriguing theories about the effects of alternate gravity levels on human development," Tsunade replied. "Learning what problems crop up and how to treat them is going to be incredibly important."
"But mama," Ruri said. "The pamphlet says that the moon has normal gravity."
Which was the point Orochi had been about to bring up, so she nodded. "Yes, that's what the pamphlets say. The gravity field is maintained at the same level as sea level here."
"The gravity level on the surface," Tsunade corrected. "They have chambers inside of the moon that are below normal gravity, partially because as you move deeper the gravity lessens but mostly because the surface gravity is aided with an artificial gravity field of some kind and they aren't maintaining it throughout the entire interior."
"But would you be permitted to access them for any long-term testing?"
"I already checked with Naruto and he approved things, provided I can supply the test subjects."
Ah. Well, that explained funding a recent 'capture a murderous group of bandits' mission, didn't it? "Would you want us to relocate there temporarily or are you planning on commuting?"
"I was expecting to do a mixture, switching back and forth a month or two at a time, but wasn't going to try to force you to join me. I'd be staying in the Konoha district up there, which faces the planet."
"...the what district?"
"Uzushio has been kind enough to permit its allies to place settlements on the moon. Shisui decided that he'd prefer Konoha's to face the planet and it will be in one corner of the pentagon that's pointing at the surface. I don't know which corner yet, but I assume the one that's relatively 'south east' when seen from here. Iwa's is apparently facing away from the planet as Kurotsuchi convinced Onoki to run the place and he wanted to be able to see the stars better."
"Oh. That's kind of Naruto to allow that."
"It's a proverbial drop in the bucket for him to do so from a land perspective and provides more bodies to get things self-sufficient up there."
Orochi nodded, as that made sense, before realizing that Ruri had been uncharacteristically silent. Looking over at her, it appeared that she was very much conflicted about things. "What's wrong?"
Ruri looked between them. "I can't be on a genin team if I'm moving between here and the moon."
"Transport pads make the trip simple, and we've not decided if Mito and I would be going back and forth as it is. We may only be visiting when Tsunade is staying up there, and even if I do go with Mito then you're responsible enough to stay here on your own."
It was obvious that she wasn't entirely happy with that, presumably because she didn't want them to be even temporarily split up. Reassuring her that things would be okay was going to be difficult.
"Yoko set up a competition for 'most good accomplished' for joining the gods on their trip to the moon," Ino said, shaking her head. "As if things weren't crazy enough as it is."
Naruto shrugged. "She didn't want it to turn into a standard bidding war, given that the shrines are already making more than enough in donations."
"I've not checked the reports," Hinata admitted as she set her empty bowl to the side. "Has anything interesting come of the competition so far?"
Ino snorted. "Twenty-six new farms, new irrigation ditches in a dozen places, sturdy yet affordable housing in over fifty villages with housing problems, ongoing work to expand roads between villages that serves as both improving trade and paying people to do work. All kinds of projects all over the continent."
"The Fire Daimyo is doing the best so far," Naruto added. "Most of the other daimyo and nobles have hired shinobi to do things fast. He's regularly hired regular workers to do things without shinobi taking shortcuts."
"Yeah, though the Water Daimyo can't be blamed for using shinobi to clean up sources of water on islands where it had stopped being drinkable."
"Of course not. That it took needing to look good for a potential slot on the trip for him to even consider the problem is another matter. She didn't mention that she backdated the 'competition' to the inauguration date of the Earth Daimyo and I imagine that it will be a shock when that's revealed. The Wind Daimyo is currently second with their funding of all the routes and settlements in the desert as new oasis points have emerged, followed by several nobles in the Land of Lightning that have been improving their areas for everyone recently."
Ino blinked a couple of times. "Scrambling to do good instead of continuing what you were already doing is going to be marked down heavily?"
"Yep."
"And nobody is going to be able to argue that."
"The Earth Daimyo is the most recently seated and she figured that it wouldn't be fair to backdate things to before that happened. They're number four in the list of daimyo, but don't seem to care about the trip at all and are sensibly just working on correcting their predecessor's mistakes."
Hinata snickered. "The final results are going to be hilarious, though I hope the 'scoring' is well-documented and incredibly objective."
Naruto snorted. "As if we'd do otherwise. You can find it in the shrine's computer systems if you want to take a look. You're both registered as shrine maidens and should have access."
Ino helped clear the table before going off to take a look at that, honestly curious about the scoring criteria.
"So," Hinata said a few days later. "I noticed that the final satellite design is flagged as being top secret instead of being accessible to the technology division."
"Don't want people finding ways to subvert them," Naruto replied.
"Yet the technology division's design is sitting there available for anyone to look at."
"Yep."
"What did you do to that poor design?"
He grinned. "Improved it."
"...by how much?"
"Quite a bit. My requirements were significantly higher than their requirements."
"While leaving the final deployment looking like their version."
"Didn't want people to question things when they got a good look at things, and all the surface components do exactly what the original design specifies."
She gave him a look, then sighed. "What do I have to do to get access to the final specs, and ideally your requirements that you built them to cover?"
He shrugged. "They're only accessible in the secure labs. You and Ino never bother to wander down there to look at what I'm working on."
That made far too much sense. "We don't normally have any hope of understanding most of it, but I'm too curious."
Heading down to the secure labs only took her a few minutes, though booting up and logging into one of the computers was mildly annoying as she apparently picked the one terminal he hadn't booted up for updates recently and all the approved updates had to install first. Once that was done she loaded the final satellite designs, half-suspecting that it was a change in the security modules that had them locked down.
Four hours later she'd have confirmed that yes, he'd changed the security modules. Disguising a planetary defense grid as communication satellites was downright clever though, especially when you could build things bigger on the inside. Probably not something anyone else who could build that way would be fooled by, but it felt like Naruto and Yoko were the only ones that were able to properly wrap their heads around doing so without seals 'hiding things away'.
...the seals division still had problems with his 'hide parts of electronics away but leave them connected to the outside' trick though, which felt like a precursor to things just 'being' bigger on the inside.
Some of the related items in the list had her interested if they'd work as well, even though they'd probably make scientists around the planet nervous. Or enraged for completely violating what they knew of the laws of physics. Likely both, honestly...though she wondered what he thought was potentially going to show up looking for a fight. All the known 'invaders' hadn't really had evidence of arriving through space travel at all.
Yoko found it amusing that all ten of the 'winners' of the competition for tickets to join the enshrinement trip to the moon had been uninterested in actually going themselves. All of them had handed them off to someone else, frequently a noble with less financial ability to do larger-scale good. The Fire Daimyo had simply held a raffle to choose a family to get his ticket and a merchant family had won the drawing, making them the only non-retainer 'commoners' along for the trip.
They were also the most respectful ones along for the trip, even their kid being better-behaved in several ways than the nobles.
All of those going along for the trip had been taken to Shrine Island via transport pad instead of trying to arrive by ship, though shrine maidens had needed to operate each pad for that to happen. This nicely explained how the shrine maidens made their regular trips to the island, and pointing out that bringing a ship when you then need to not disrespect the gods by taking shortcuts is a good idea.
Running through the process of gathering all five gods took most of the morning, bringing them down and to the shuttles parked near the docks. Shrine maidens would operate all but the shuttle holding the gods, which would seemingly operate itself but would in reality be remotely piloted by a clone. They then served lunch before piling everyone into the shuttles, carefully skipping all explanations for how the trip was expected to continue.
It was amusing seeing the looks on the faces of those along for the trip as the shuttles lifted into the air and headed for the storm barrier around the island. The shrine maiden in the first shuttle was able to trigger the parting of the storm as they headed out over the ocean.
Choka found the idea of small, enclosed carriages that could fly without wings to be incredible. He'd known that Uzushio had flying machines that could reach their flying island, though was no noble and had no hope of affording a ride on one, and Konoha had their airship routes. This was obviously something else entirely. Watching the ocean fly by below them as they sped across the surface was incredible as well.
It wasn't long before they were obviously approaching a different island, this one with a large dome on it that caught the light in interesting ways. He wasn't sure what to think of it, but it was obviously their destination. The carriages didn't head for the domed area though, but instead swung around to a settlement closer to the water level and landed there. The priests and priestesses had directed them to leave their bags here before they collected the gods and began a trek up and into the dome, eventually coming out in the middle of the island.
Finding out that there were five shrines here was another surprise, and they got to watch as all five gods were enshrined in their honden. The feeling he'd come to associate with the shrines grew in power with each enshrinement, eventually causing the entire island to feel like a less-powerful version of Shrine Island itself. With that done, they were brought back down to where their luggage was and the shrine maidens helped them to their rooms.
Over an hour later they'd gathered again,and he noted that the worst of the nobles was acting a little more respectful, perhaps not having realized that there would be an immediate enshrinement?
"It is now time for us to truly depart," the head priestess called out as a dome started to close over the settlement. "The trip is a very long one, longer than any you have taken before. I do hope that none of you are prone to being space-sick."
He...wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Surely there was just some kind of portal that could be used to reach the moon without using the transport pads, and they just had to...
The entire island shaking took him by surprise, and he turned to look at the ocean...to see it dropping away from them. Moving closer to the edge of the dome, as they'd been gathered near an edge, let him see that they were rising fairly rapidly. Gulping, because they were already far higher than he'd ever been in his life, he looked at Maya and the kids. They were also gaping as they watched the ocean drop away far beneath them.
"We will be taking two weeks to reach the moon," the head priestess said as the curvature of the planet became visible, though he couldn't tell you how long that had taken. "Though it may not look like we're heading for it properly at first because we are going to where the moon will be when we arrive."
...they were already traveling faster than he thought he'd ever traveled before, barring cheating with teleporting between transport pads, and it was still going to take two weeks?
Shisui shook his head as he looked away from the screen. "Earth's first space-traversing ship is a flying shrine island heading to the moon."
"I'm reliably informed that's not the case," Kakashi replied. "Hinata has a pile of shuttles and transport ships that she's tested more privately, and even those get second place."
"...what did Naruto build before that, then?"
"The moon."
"What?"
Kakashi shrugged. "The moon itself is basically a giant ship that primarily uses its ability to move around to keep itself in a proper orbit. Or at least that's my interpretation of what I was told about it by Futo."
That...did and didn't make sense. "Being able to stay in place doesn't make it a proper 'ship'. Maybe some kind of station in space, but not a ship."
"He claimed that the theoretical numbers indicated that it could, if directed to, fly off at any time now that it's fully constructed and powered."
"...Naruto built a moon-sized mobile vessel and parked it in orbit to provide the benefits of a moon on the planet?"
"Apparently."
"Why would he go to those extremes?"
"My best guess is that he wants to be able to park the moon between a threat and the planet to be a last line of defense. Odoroki claims that he's 'touchy' about unknown threats and doesn't want to rely on other nations figuring out how to defend the planet."
It was a definitely weird outlook...and possibly worrying how much power Naruto's successor would end up with. He was fine, but would the one that took over leadership of Uzushio when he retired be able to be trusted with the sheer number of things that had been put into place?
Davaa shook his head as he looked at the screen showing the flying island heading for the moon. He and his team were probably the only ones not surprised at the fact that the likely-Goddess was heading to establish herself on the newly-constructed moon. Everyone else was still in disbelief over their stories, though having her connected to another flying island was likely to stop the hecklers that decried his research time.
Setting something like this up while pretending to not be a Goddess had also very likely taken significant time, helping to explain why the mountain had been closed. Not that his team was even halfway done with the documentation already provided due to their work in trying to properly learn the language as well.
The first flying island and the moon construction both pointed at there being a continent out there that was far beyond the middling tricks available here, and the proven existence of such a thing had basically shut down the war efforts of all the countries involved. There wasn't official peace, though discussions were ongoing, but there was a lot of concern over wasting effort on each other when someone else could show up at any time and walk right over them.
"We're probably a good century behind understanding the basic principles of their technology," Oyuun commented from where she sat nearby. "The people of the countries responsible for that must be incredibly advanced."
"You'd be surprised," an unknown man commented, causing the two of them to turn to stare at him. He just smirked. "In many ways you're more advanced than the bulk of the planet, honestly."
"How would you know?" Davaa questioned.
"I'm a traveler and the people here have had to overcome limits that people elsewhere didn't have to worry about. Of course, a couple thousand years of being at ground zero for an attempt to destroy the planet didn't help them with their advancement."
That...sounded like the story of the 'God Tree', which was a very interesting thing to come up. "How far have you traveled to hear about that?"
"I'm probably the single most traveled person on the planet right now, though I've met others that I suspect have exceeded my travels. Just not here, as far as I can tell."
"Why are you bringing this up?" Oyuun questioned, giving the man a look.
"Because I was curious if Davaa here had reached certain lessons, mostly. He seemed to recognize what I mentioned."
"How did you know what I'm studying?" Davaa asked.
"You got it all from my sister. Why wouldn't I know?"
His...oh. That was certainly a reason to gulp in worry. At the same time, he did have questions. "Er, would you know enough to be able to explain some details that don't seem to translate well?"
The man gave him a look, before nodding. "I can give it a try, I suppose."
"There was mention of a Kaguyo being defeated by her children?"
"Kaguya, and yes. Her two sons defeated her and sealed her in the previous moon."
"I've not determined exactly what happened to the sons. They passed teachings on, obviously..."
"You must not have reached the point where their lineages get explained a bit more then. Of course, we didn't include the entire family history either."
"...family history?"
"Yep. I'm a direct descendant, and have ties to both brothers in my ancestry."
"Oh."
It was not surprising when the man vanished at some point without being noticed leaving, but if he and his sister were descended from those brothers, the children of the Rabbit Goddess that turned into a demon a thousand years or more ago...
Maya had been amazed as they landed on one of the oceans on the moon, and then the process of collecting the gods had begun. They flew across the surface of the moon to the first shrine complex and were able to be present as yet another holy place took proper root. A priest and a number of shrine maidens were left behind there as they'd returned to the flying shrine island and taken it around to the other side of the moon, this one with the Earth hanging in the sky above them, to repeat the whole process a second time.
They had the option of flying back to Earth on the flying island, but had opted to instead take a transport pad back after the rest of the festivities. Another battle of the bands that the kids were interested in seeing, the opening festivities of an examination for jounin, and just the general celebration of the opening of the moon itself to tourists and visitors.
It was a bit weird the Earth hung in the sky in the same place all the time though, instead of moving across the sky. But it also rotated up there and it made sense when you considered that the same area was always visible from the Earth.
"It's too bad that they don't need traditional merchants here," Choka commented as he looked up at the Earth hanging in the sky. "Because the view is incredible."
"Just be happy that the shinobi don't care to cart merchandise around like we do," Maya said. "They can carry far more than we can with far less trouble, but are content to let others do so instead."
"I suppose."
"Though I suspect that it'll be years before we can buy our own drinks at taverns. Too many people will want to hear the story of our trip to the moon."
"Hopefully the fame won't go to the kids' heads. It might've died down a bit by the time they're ready to head off on their own, and they won't be as likely to be immediately recognized by then either."
She had to agree there, though shook her head as she realized something. "There's going to be a push to rename Uzushiogakure, isn't there?"
"Oh?"
"The Uzukage is probably going to be referred to as the Moon Daimyo soon enough."
"He seems like the kind of person who wouldn't care for such a title, but I can't say he hasn't earned it."
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder