"An aerial base?"
Amamiya Kenichi glanced over at Sasori, a bit surprised. He really hadn't expected him to come up with that kind of idea.
But he had to admit—it was actually pretty interesting.
In the ninja world, there were only a handful of people who could truly fly, and even then, their altitude was limited. Nobody was cruising at proper high-altitude levels.
Which meant:
A base above the clouds?
The safety factor would be insanely high.
The only real issues would be natural phenomena—thunderstorms, violent winds, things like that. As long as you picked the right altitude and region, most of the time it'd be extremely safe.
And on top of that, hiding the thing wouldn't even be that hard.
Find a region that was constantly covered in clouds. Build the base above the cloud layer. From the ground, no one would ever see a thing.
Most importantly—
It would completely counter Zetsu's scouting.
Kenichi didn't know the precise mechanics of that "Mayfly Technique," but he was pretty sure it couldn't let him fly into the sky. Zetsu had never shown that kind of ability.
"This idea of yours is… actually pretty good," Kenichi nodded slowly.
Flying wasn't the problem. The real headache was:
How do you keep a base that heavy in the air long-term?
Even a hot-air balloon had limits.
"But even with a balloon," Kenichi continued, shrugging, "you can't support a full base. The load capacity is way too limited for that."
A base wasn't going to be made of nothing but lightweight wood. There'd be structures, equipment, maybe even weapon platforms. That was tons of weight. Dozens of tons wasn't even unrealistic.
How big a balloon would you need to keep that afloat?
"How much weight can a balloon normally carry?" Sasori asked curiously.
"According to the formula PVρ = Mg, then…" Kenichi started reflexively, then froze halfway. "Wait, no. In this world…"
He'd rattled off the formula from instinct—remnants of his cram-school days. Back then, he'd memorized formulas so hard he could probably mumble them in his sleep.
But here came the problem.
This was the ninja world.
Was the gas composition even the same? What was the air density? And what about gravitational acceleration?
He knew the value for his previous world. But for this world?
Yeah, no idea.
"So I need to measure the gravitational acceleration here first," Kenichi muttered. "If I don't have standard instruments, then maybe I can use a water-drop method…"
Sasori stared at him, eyes going a little blank.
PV-what?
Water-drop what?
For the first time in a long while, Sasori had a very clear and simple thought:
I am uneducated.
Fortunately, Kenichi didn't stay stuck in theory mode for too long. He quickly realized he didn't have a measuring tape on him, which made any serious experiment impossible right now.
"Well, whatever. That can wait until we're back in the lab," he decided. "Using a water-drop method will do as a rough test anyway."
He tapped the edge of the basket lightly.
"For now," he concluded, "this balloon can carry, at most, the weight of three or four people. That's the safest estimate."
Sasori didn't press further. Instead, his eyes lit up with a different kind of interest, and he pulled Kenichi into a fresh round of brainstorming.
Multiple balloons to share the weight. Modular platforms. Segmenting the base into independently floating units.
The conversation drifted between crazy and plausible.
Kenichi didn't mind at all. They had time to kill on the way, and who knew? Maybe one day Sasori really would build an aerial fortress.
As for Kenichi himself, he didn't have the bandwidth. His project list was already a mess. An air base was very low on the priority board.
With the balloon and Wind Release for propulsion, the journey went much faster this time. No radar. No anti-air weaponry. No airborne patrol units. The ninja world was still wonderfully primitive in that regard.
After a day of flight, they finally saw what they'd come for.
"…That should be it." Kenichi narrowed his eyes, looking down through the clouds.
His three-tomoe Sharingan was useful, but it wasn't a real telescope. From this height, all he could see were dense clusters of tiny black dots shifting and colliding on a snowy plain.
But this definitely wasn't the Land of Fire anymore.
And that number of bodies? Yeah. That had to be the main battlefield between Konoha and Kumogakure.
"Kenichi. Northeastern sector is the Kumogakure main force," Sasori's calm voice came from the side.
Kenichi turned—and saw Sasori holding up a spyglass, calmly scanning the battlefield.
Kenichi covered his face.
Right.
He'd forgotten.
The ninja world might be missing aircraft and radar, but telescopes definitely existed. In the future, Deidara would even use a compact scope in battle.
Under Sasori's direction, Kenichi adjusted the balloon's position. Then he took the spyglass himself to confirm.
Once he'd double-checked the formation marks and banners, his expression settled.
"Alright," he said quietly.
He put the spyglass away and pulled out a sealing scroll. With a slight inhalation, he bit his thumb, formed the signs, and pressed his hand down.
Poof.
The thermobaric bomb appeared in midair, thick metal gleaming dully in the filtered light above the clouds.
"Sasori!" Kenichi shouted instinctively.
They'd done this once before. Sasori moved in perfect sync.
The Third Kazekage puppet's arms extended forward, iron sand forming a cradle-like frame as he carefully caught the bomb.
"…You're a lot gentler with it this time," Kenichi couldn't help but laugh. "Last time, you were tossing it around like a log."
"You'd be nervous too if you had a Tailed Beast Bomb in your arms," Sasori replied flatly.
As he spoke, iron sand coiled more tightly, and magnet release chakra began to circulate.
He started accelerating the bomb. Slowly at first. Then faster. Then faster still.
High above the battlefield, invisible to the naked eye, a killing tool began falling, wrapped in magnetically accelerated velocity.
"Lord Raikage! The observation squad reports a dark object above us!"
In the Kumogakure main camp, a masked Anbu burst into the command tent.
"Good."
A snarl twisted the face of the Fourth Raikage, A, as he slammed a massive fist down on the table.
The table instantly shattered.
But A looked very satisfied.
Finally.
Finally, those rats had shown themselves again.
The previous surprise attack on Kumogakure had left him humiliated and enraged. What made it worse was that there had been no trail to follow—only a vague conclusion:
The attack came from the sky.
So A had made a plan.
This time, he was sure Konoha wasn't behind it. If Konoha had that kind of firepower, they would've been raining destruction nonstop instead of just hitting once and stopping.
So it had to be mercenaries. Some unknown group that had accepted a bounty.
And once someone had been paid once, they could be paid again. If there was a client willing to hire them once, there might be more.
So A simply assumed:
They'd come again.
He'd personally led Kumogakure's main force to the Frost Country front. While everyone else clashed with Konoha's shinobi, he'd assigned a special unit with only one job—
Don't fight.
Just watch the sky.
Binoculars and telescopes in hand, that squad had continuously scanned the clouds overhead, ready to shout the moment anything suspicious appeared.
Now, it had paid off.
"The problem is…" A frowned as he stepped out of the tent and looked upward.
The altitude was ridiculously high.
Most ninjutsu couldn't even reach that far. Kumogakure had a chakra cannon project under research, but the prototype was still incomplete and in no shape to be dragged onto the battlefield.
But that didn't mean they were helpless.
"Bee," A growled, not taking his eyes off the sky. "You heard that, right?"
A shadow stirred behind him.
"Yeah, yeah, I heard, bro," came a lazy, rhyming reply.
A monstrous silhouette unfurled behind Killer B, chakra gathering, dense and heavy, coalescing into a huge, eight-tailed form.
A suffocating, feral aura rippled across the snowy plain.
The Eight-Tails, Gyūki, was coming out to play.