118

Naruto had needed several days to catch up on things, from spot-checking Hinata's work while she had taken the role of acting Uzukage through to all the Uzukage-only items. In a way, he half-wished he'd taken the time to do that before dropping the letter on everyone...but it probably wouldn't have changed much in the long run. Or possibly even the short run, if he was being honest, because Ino had found more of the contingency plans and started using them with infiltration teams to subtly influence things towards a peaceful Uzushio planetary takeover.

The letter just kind of finished that process off, if only from a 'nobody wants to be left out of going to space and exploring the galaxy' point of view. Having a current monopoly on everything related to accessing space, with nobody else even sure where to start, helped that.

Weirdly, there were no indications of the expected 'join up, get tech, then run off with it' plans in countries. This appeared to be a combination of recognizing that they'd have to do so on another planet to get away from the planetary defense grid and just plain not expecting to get up to speed fast enough for that to be a viable plan. He'd have thought that some would want to try the 'on another planet' option anyway, but it seemed that nobody expected to be able to defend those planets without Uzushio's help anyway.

His guess was that the 'humanity stands together' thinking would only last so long, either once they had more compact options for planetary defenses that others could deploy or the known large threat was taken care of. But by then it would also likely be colonies splitting off, so the infrastructure setups were likely going to need to be set up similar to how the different village systems had been configured. Independent but able to communicate with each other in various ways, right down to the defense systems, and with possible backdoors for him and a few others just in case.

That was future planning though. For now he had to continue working with Yoko on getting what they knew recorded for analysis, prepare broader information packets for the planet, and see how to handle officially taking over and the tech deployments needed to manage that...the latter being particularly troublesome in some respects. All of the security systems assumed you had access to mana, even if it was only a small amount, and ideally had a net converting some of it to chakra. The latter was at least partially optional thanks to considering the 'chakra net removed' individuals in Kirigakure, but most of the planet didn't even have mana.

Well, they could probably substitute retinal scans for mana or chakra signatures in many places, and adding in fingerprint checking was an option as well. For those who needed extra-secure access a chakra-active tattoo or a small implanted identifier chip might work?

He created a clone to go assign thinking about some of that to the technology and seals divisions, just in case they had other ideas and nobody figured out how to grant mana to the entire planet at once in the next couple of years.

Shisui looked over his notes, resisting the urge to sigh. "Fear and greed have taken over the planet."

"At least it is fear of a known enemy instead of fear of Uzushio," the Daimyo replied. "Defending the planet like that ensured that Uzushio is respected instead, though there is an obvious greed in wanting to share in the bounty of exploring space."

"I suppose. But the entire planet, including countries that have minimal exposure, pushing for a bit of a 'diplomatic conquest' is unexpected."

"Anyone paying attention knew that the only reason they weren't in charge was because they didn't want to be. If Naruto was dropping technology and paperwork on other countries overnight and broadcasting various things to them then I can see them coming to the same general conclusion. Then add in that the attackers from space made it obvious that it didn't matter if they wanted to be in charge, they effectively already were due to nobody else knowing how to even begin defending the planet?"

"I get it. Still feels odd that there aren't holdouts."

"That is odd, but the 'state of the world' reports that have come through Uzushio's intelligence division seem to point at one continent being more broadly advanced. For some reason, they were marked on the maps as having decided that Uzushio should be in charge for religious reasons though."

"Even I don't get enough detail to have any clue why that is, beyond knowing that Yoko has been annoyed about things in the past."

"The only questions that remain are how much Naruto will fight the movement to place Uzushio in charge...and how he'll structure things when he eventually accepts. I think we've made good progress in suggestions for him, but we just don't have enough information to do a proper job of things."

Honestly, all the work they'd put in felt like it was going to be a waste of time. Naruto seemed to be excessively over-prepared for various situations and had a way of looking at things that defied conventional logic. While having ready-to-go plans for a takeover of this magnitude was incredibly unlikely, that didn't mean that any help was going to be needed to figure things out or that anyone else understood the inner workings of Uzushio to handle it faster.

To be blunt about it, Uzushio probably knew how to rework everyone else already with minimal fuss, but they could ask Naruto about that when they met with him as the only on-paper 'holdouts' due to 'talk to the leader of Uzushiogakure' being in treaty agreements.

Ino hadn't expected Naruto to delegate a pile of research to the intelligence division, but had to admit that he had a lot to worry about. Hinata seemed to have her hands full with the technology division, and the seals division was also reportedly trying to figure out things he'd dropped on them. The spells division was the only one not directly reeling from a deluge of requests, but Naruto dropping 'this is how faster than light travel worked for the spaceships using a spell-like substance, figure out how to do it with spell processors' on them was enough.

Of course, in addition to wanting a pile of information gathered, the intelligence division were technically the translators as the only ones generally trying to understand another culture's written works. Which was actually her and Naruto as primaries and a handful of others as 'for this specific region' potential choices at the moment. This meant that anything he didn't bother dropping on a stack of clones to translate was going through her, specifically, and he wanted a lot of information on the spaceships and their trap available to everyone.

Even with paperwork clones this was all an undertaking. Identifying places for local administration facilities and towers, forests or similar that could be turned into power generation areas, possible shrine locations, gods of other religions to possibly run with instead of their versions if any suitable ones existed instead of forcing their gods on everyone...

It was somewhat obvious that Naruto intended to blitz the planet at some point in the near future, though hopefully not as a single-shot event where he tried to hit everyone at once. His limits might be beyond what others had, but he still had limits. Even if he was probably having clones build things ahead of time and would just need to install them.

Kakuzu grimaced as he caught up on some local news over lunch. He'd been shocked previously when he finally found out that there were species out there that traveled the stars and wanted them dead. Having that lead to the area he'd moved into petitioning to put Uzushiogakure in charge of the entire planet was another thing entirely after coming this far to get away from most of the shinobi nonsense.

Unfortunately, he couldn't argue the justifications. Uzushio was the only place anyone knew of with space technology, having built a new moon before defending the planet from hostile ships. They had amply demonstrated that they could take over, but merely hadn't done so, and anyone who wanted to possibly explore space in their lifetime probably needed to be part of the country to have a hope. As there was likely no chance of everyone being able to reach them to join up, the next best option was to expand their territory to encompass all of those who wanted the benefits. Which appeared like it might be the entire planet.

The only way to escape was to find a way to leave the planet, and they apparently had a monopoly on that already. He was going to have to hope that things were...tolerable. And nobody from Uzushio wanted him dead, because if that was the case he wasn't holding out a lot of hope for his personal survival if their people started having global reach.

After he was done eating he went to check with a couple of people that he hoped had heard back from their contacts. Hunting down job opportunities was reasonably easy, though he had come to the conclusion that he might have to head back closer to where shinobi were in five to six years if he was going to want to replace his various hearts properly. Nobody here had suitable hearts to replace elemental ones, and honestly most of the other organs he could harvest were somewhat below his usual standards as well.

But for now, he was hoping that the vandals he'd heard rumors of had been annoying enough for someone to pay to have them eliminated. His last couple of jobs had been unfortunately violence-free and he was far from a pacifist.

Hanabi hadn't seen the written version of things that Naruto had distributed, but everyone had been encouraged to catch the broadcast version. Or broadcast clarification? There were supposedly 'misconceptions' that had cropped up with the written summary of things that just didn't come across well on paper. A recording was also going to be available, but he happened to be in a good position to see the initial broadcast...at least for here. Supposedly there were multiple language versions for different parts of the planet that were going to start at 'mid-morning' times locally.

Himeki dropped down next to him as the large screens in the clan's viewing room were indicating that things were about to start. When the broadcast began it was being run by someone he didn't recognize, a black-haired woman without animal features that didn't introduce herself. Possibly just Naruto with a shapeshift active? Whatever the case, she began with a statement that they would be covering the two major threats Uzushio was aware of.

The older Ōtsutsuki with their 'god trees' came first, indicated as hopefully having been taken care of, but with no confirmation. A description of the trees, and how they consumed the life of the planets they were planted on for the eventual harvest of the energies to empower Ōtsutsuki that ate the fruit of the trees, and how the Sage of Six Paths and his brother had started the process of removing the tree that had been planted on Earth. No details on how 'killing the tailed beasts' had been accomplished, but that was described as being the final end to the local tree and the reason that a number of things had happened. Old roots of the tree no longer being a source of power, the restoration of life in barren areas, and even the destruction of the old moon.

After that there was a deliberate shift in visual style as they moved to the more recently-revealed threat. Starting with how they arrived and that they were circling the star system to get into position to observe Earth as the only known-inhabitable planet, and then their determination that the planet...or at least Uzushio, anyway, was too advanced. The way they attacked followed, a quick faster-than-light jump from the outer system to much closer before launching absurdly fast projectiles to try to take out priority targets. They'd not been able to continue their approach immediately due to a cooldown period on their engines before they could jump to faster-than-light again, and that was when they'd been intercepted by the war island.

Details of their technology, using a form of magic or chakra to violate the laws of physics without understanding what they were actually doing with it, and their tactics followed. Finding out how they 'reproduced', turning millions of people into a core for the semi-living computer intelligence ships, was horrifying. Details on their trap followed, a network of incredibly long-distance travel aids that led to a 'perfect to be the center of galactic government' structure to be discovered, on top of the various remnants of themselves left behind intentionally when seemingly-destroyed to use mind control on those who found them. Use of the technology based on the magic substance was itself a trap, because it seemingly wasn't able to be understood too deeply and would lead to stagnation instead of true innovation.

But Uzushio did understand it, due to understanding chakra and magic. They would be able to make things that looked like Earth had fallen for the trap while not actually being that limited. Comments were made that 'lucky breaks' with the Ōtsutsuki threat and other items left them skipping a few hundred years of technological development to get to this point, but those weren't elaborated on.

"And this is where we reach the major problem many have with understanding things," the likely-Naruto woman said. "For both threats, but the newer one is the more relevant. We have been repeatedly asked why we aren't just going over and solving the problem, then moving on to more important local matters." The woman stepped outside, and the camera started to move away from her as some size markings appeared on the bottom of the screen. "For reference, each area is getting local references for this next part."

The 'zoom-out' continued until the entire continent was shown, with multiple markers and distances between them showing, only to then continue. Eventually it pulled back enough to show the entire planet, with some of the original markers still present, and then other further-out markers appeared and distances between them were shown. After nearly thirty seconds to let them process that, it rapidly zoomed out, the markings on the bottom of the screen changing far more rapidly, until the Earth and Moon were both visible.

"This is the first point where people really don't tend to understand the scale of things," the woman said. "Here, the Earth and Moon are to scale with one another, as is the distance between them." Ghostly copies of the Earth appeared between the two. "You can fit twenty-five copies of the Earth between it and the moon. Even though Uzushio can reach it reasonably easily, it is still an incredible distance away. Light is one of the fastest things we know of that doesn't require magic and it takes over a second to traverse the distance."

This was allowed to be absorbed for a minute, and then things started to zoom out again. The Earth got a 'you are here' label pointing at it even as it shrank down to a tiny little dot. Eventually the Sun appeared, and the zoom-out stopped. Ghostly images of the Sun then appeared between the Earth and the Sun, and the woman continued. "You could fit over a hundred Earths across the width of the Sun, and over a hundred Suns between the Earth and the Sun." Then things started zooming out again, the Sun shifting to the middle of the screen as the Earth could no longer be shown as anything but the point on the label.

At this point other planets got their own labels, to show how far apart they all really were, before the zoom-out stopped and the woman continued. "This is one possible definition of our 'star system', and the smallest of them." A line appeared opposite the Sun from the Earth, and then started curving around the system. "And this is the approach the attacking ships took when they arrived. You could fit over five thousand Suns between them and the Sun itself, and would be approaching six hundred thousand Earths." The line stopped when there was a direct path between it and the Earth itself. "And that is where they sat for several hours, observing before being spotted. It takes light hours to reach us from there, but our light had already been traveling that way and they could observe the state of the planet from several hours prior from there."

Hanabi had expected more of what had happened with the fight to be described, but things then started zooming out again. The planet labels vanished, and even the Earth label, turning into a generic 'you are here' pointing at the dot that represented the Sun. Three other star dots appeared, and a dotted line connected them to the furthest out before the woman continued speaking. "And this is where they came from. We haven't properly named this star as it is difficult to spot, but it takes light just barely over seven years to make the trip from there to here and we expect our current fastest travel option with any hope of finishing the trip would take a minimum of thirty years if our scientists are correct. One of their travel aids sits in the system."

Things sat there for a moment, then zoomed out further. A lot further, showing a giant spiraling collection of stars. Lines started appearing between points as well, forming a network of connections that spanned everything except for a ring near the center of the spiral. There was only a single line entering the center of the spiral itself. Eventually labels appeared on several things, a few 'processing points' and the trapped 'galactic government center' in particular. That one line connecting to the center seemed to exist to reach one of the processing points.

A dotted line then connected the 'you are here' point to the 'galactic government center' point as the woman continued. "It takes light nearly thirty thousand years to traverse the distance between us and where we need to go. We need to figure out a number of problems, including supply options, before we have any hope of reaching there." A series of the web of lines then lit up. "Even using the travel aids in place, due to the caution needed as we explore to look for possible problems, it will likely take years. And that is after we finish figuring out how to build our own ships that can travel fast enough to reach the nearest travel aid itself without needing to have children onboard to complete the mission."

Himeki had gulped at this point, and he couldn't blame her. The scales of the distances were incredibly difficult to grasp, but it also made it very obvious that this was not something likely to be solved for years.

Naruto had presented a global set of laws, organizational structure, a phase-in plan for a number of aspects that was also a phase-out plan for some of the regional leadership roles, and a number of other items to leaders all over the planet. This had taken Shisui and the Fire Daimyo by surprise, given that it went far beyond anything they'd been expecting when they'd been intending to provide him with advice.

The only objection anyone had with the plans was the term limits he'd wanted to include for his own rule. Having personal control over the superweapons that the satellite grid represented and not having turned them on the planet itself made him trusted, and for a technical military leader he was one of the kindest to civilians. Instead, he'd been convinced to leave it as 'until the known threats are taken care of, at which point a general vote can be called for switching to a council until a single leader is needed for the next crisis' instead.

It was obvious that many of those involved in pushing for that assumed that he was going to have to die before he got out of being in charge, at least on paper.

He'd also been convinced to convene leaders from all over the planet for an official 'Emperor of Earth' coronation ceremony, and the only place he had suitable for that was the moon. Doing so positioned such that the Earth itself was visible in the sky was probably suitably impressive for the occasion though, even if he had to build a correctly-shaped area to hold the ceremony in. The exam arena wasn't really a good choice anyway though, so he was already building something new. Positioning it properly and ensuring that it had a proper backdrop for the audience was easy enough.

They still didn't have full solutions for 'people without mana accessing secure areas' that ensured said areas were actually secure though, meaning that he was currently working on the assumption that most of the planet wasn't getting access to things that were too sensitive. Most of that was already in isolated locations anyway as it was though, so that wasn't a major problem beyond creating some varying levels of security for certain kinds of records. Needing mana to access medical records when the people the records were for and the doctors currently treating them didn't have mana wasn't going to do anyone any good anyway.

Odoroki blinked as she looked over the very large area. "What in the world has Naruto pulled off this time?"

"Nanotech construction," Hinata answered, sounding annoyed herself. "Mass production of precision components by dropping raw materials in and letting the nanotech handle it. He can spit out more satellites per day this way than he could before, and he even managed to get automatic activation of some of the seals into the mix."

"Did he at least document how this works?"

"I...think so? As a society we seem to have skipped a few hundred years of steady advancements and skipped to late-stage tech and he seems to have documented the few hundred years of progress. It's taking time to get through it all."

Futo snorted. "Matatabi crashed twice before giving up on trying to process it all, citing obvious limits in what the Tome was allowed to know."

Odoroki flinched at that thought. "Yeah." She then blinked as she looked at things. "Wait, these aren't making satellite pieces. Those look like shrine internals."

Hinata looked over things, then nodded. "Yeah, that appears to be the current focus here. Yoko needs a lot of materials to start setting up basic shrines across the entire planet."

"There's no way to train enough shrine maidens, let alone priestesses or priests, for that many shrines on short notice."

"I've not even attempted to figure out her plans there. Too many other projects and political concerns."

"Okay, fair point. Why are we out here though?"

"I'm out of ideas for why the conveyor belt keeps having problems dragging the completed components out of the pit. I happened to mention things near Miho and she said that you three might be able to help before I bother Naruto to see what I haven't noticed in the documentation yet."

That made sense, though... "Where did Miho run off to?"

Futo gestured ahead of them. "She's six feet under the nanotech doing something to the conveyor belts, but she has Knight Armor up so probably isn't at risk from the nanotech. Can't say the same for her brushes and ink though."

"Oh."

Yoko was finding the prospect of expanding the shrine network globally to be a bit daunting, but there were a lot of benefits. Civilians were predicted to be more likely to accept clean water and improved crops from a shrine instead of blatant seals for one, in addition to the shrines generally being a guaranteed oasis of plant life even if placed in an urban area. More importantly though, they had evidence that the shrines promoted magic. Not chakra, necessarily, but they had ways to deal with that if you were generating mana.

Having a pregnant woman squat in the building hiding the cave entrance on the far side of the other-continent shrine mountain, right on the edge of the shrine's effects, had been a decent proof-of-concept there. Her son had been born generating mana, and only noticed after the fact. That others born near the various shrines were more magically powerful than they should've been based on other known factors pointed at the shrines themselves promoting the development of magic.

The problem was that they weren't training enough priests and priestesses for a fast expansion of full shrine service. Her best solution there right now was roaming priests and priestesses visiting each shrine each month or two as others were trained up to eventually fully handle things locally. Language was going to be a problem though, unless she and maybe Ino were the ones handling things to start with.

Of course, then there was the last reason to promote a somewhat-consistent religion, and that was the absurd number of people that seemed to need a 'higher power' to impose basic morals. Without one they seemed to be unable to grasp that they might want to avoid indiscriminately killing their neighbors over petty grievances, stealing from others, and other such items.

Hinata looked at Ino, who had a blackout mask covering her eyes. "You know that our chakra control is a bit off due to our pregnancies, yet still did something stupid."

"It worked," Ino defended. "I just got some mental backlash on the last one, and with a little work Yoko will probably take over things for the future."

"What were you even doing?"

"Trying to solve the 'not enough people know languages from elsewhere' problem."

"...what?"

"I found Davaa and pushed Japanese into his head, then pushed three other languages into some of the shrine maidens so that they could work with other continents more easily. It was when I hit Kiyori for possible training benefits that she proved to be strong enough to resist and caused some backlash, but it still worked."

"How do you drop languages into someone else's head?"

"By reversing an interrogation technique. Instead of pulling information and memories out I dump a bunch of information in."

That...honestly sounded reasonable. Except it also sounded impossible because that wasn't how that Yamanaka technique was supposed to work. On the other hand, arguing that was a little silly if it had worked, and making things do something they weren't supposed to probably came with being in the Uzumaki clan. "You know, doing that with regional leaders might not be a bad idea so that they can all communicate with each other."

"Feel free to mention that to Naruto. I'm going to sit here for a few more hours hoping the backlash headache goes away."

That wasn't a bad idea, though going and checking on the instructions provided was probably a good idea first. And maybe doing a check of the shrine maiden test subjects and a subtle check on Davaa to ensure that there were no signs of impending stroke or something.

Naruto had found some volunteers to practice Ino's 'drop languages into someone else' trick on over the past few weeks. Thanks to that he'd figured out how to do so without causing any pain or discomfort, which the original did not manage, and had created a seal array that could be primed with a set number of charges to grant languages with some minor discomfort. That had to be charged by someone who could manage it without the seal, and arranging for the 'charge level' of the seal to be easily read and displayed had been a little tricky, but it meant that he could set up 'get a set of languages' stations across the planet with minimal trouble for use as people needed them.

The seals division, upon having that array dropped on them, had just kind of collapsed into infighting over how it was impossible. Admittedly, nobody other than him was able to charge the seal, and he'd not told them that it worked for a lot more than just languages. Karin and Tsunade had called bullshit on the 'instant medic-nin' version but were working with the initial test subjects anyway.

He'd used the non-seal version on all the arriving leaders and their retinues so that everyone could communicate with one another, taking most of them by surprise as he did so as they hadn't even noticed him granting them a language or two until they realized that they understood things that had previously been gibberish to them. As predicted, this reinforced the belief that he was a god in some of them, but he'd not considered that they'd start spreading that theory to others until it started happening.

But now he was making his way to the ceremonial thrones he'd constructed. Yoko was presiding over the coronation as a religious leader instead of a political one, with Hinata and Ino joining him so that they could take their positions as Empresses. Something that seemed to annoy a few leaders present, but that nobody was willing to actually argue.

The coronation as Emperor was unfortunately just the first step in the next few decades of preparation and build-up. They'd need to show that they were at least exploring in forty years at the latest, through failing to trigger the interface on the transit aid, or else the wandering 'monitor' might realize that something was up and bring in the large fleet before they were ready.

It was going to be a long-term project, and would need to include setting up self-sufficient colonies outside of the trap. In other dimensions, perhaps heading to one of the three likely Ōtsutsuki-destroyed planets that were somewhat close and showed signs of still having power nodes in them? Revitalizing those planets would be a good test, if it was possible, and all indications were that they were entirely outside of the reach of the omnicidal artificial intelligences...