Author's Note: Short chapter today, although there's quite a bit of worldbuilding at the bottom.

Orochimaru unslung something from one of the samurai-shaped training dummies and tossed it to Naruto. "Catch," he said.

Naruto studied the thing dubiously, the rest of the team looking over his shoulder. He couldn't think what it might be; it was all metal, with a tube at one end and bits coming off at strange angles over the length of it. With the way it was balanced it wouldn't be much use as a weapon, and he couldn't imagine what job it would be a useful tool for...maybe making holes in the ground to plant seeds?

"The hell is this?" he demanded, staring at the Snake Sannin in confusion. He took a few practice swings and grimaced in disgust as it twisted in his hands. "This thing sucks. What retard came up with it?"

Orochimaru smiled thinly. "A very smart man, actually. And you're using it wrong." He took it back and flipped it around, checking the device with smooth professionalism. He slipped a rectangular box into a socket on the bottom and fiddled with one of the metal projections before clamping the paddle end to his shoulder and sighting down the tube at the archery target four hundred yards away.

BAM!

Even Anko jumped at the thunderous noise; her team was suddenly back-to-back, kunai in hand.

Orochimaru glanced at them before looking downrange again. He flipped a switch on the side of the weapon and leaned into it.

BABABABABABABABABAM! A strobe of fire flicked from the end of the device and thunder roared continuously as a river of brass cylinders flew out the side of the metal device. It lasted only a second or two, but the noise was deafening. When it finally stopped, Orochimaru casually pulled the rectangular box out of the weapon, checked something on the tube, and tossed the box on the table in front of the training dummies where the other strange-looking objects rested.

"This is an M16A1 battle rifle," he said, dropping into a lecturing tone as he held the weapon up for their examination. "It is the primary battle rifle for the Republic; it is in mass production and there are millions of copies in their inventory. It uses a purely chemical explosive to fire a four gram bullet at thirty-one hundred feet per second, with sufficient force that the bullet will pass completely through a human being regardless of the presence of body armor, and will remain dangerous for some distance on the other side. The weapon has a twenty round clip, an effective range of five hundred and fifty yards for a point target, and uses no chakra. A civilian can be taught to use one to a military standard in two to four weeks."

Naruto snorted. "So what? Civilians have had bows and slings for centuries, but they still aren't a threat to ninja."

Orochimaru calmly considered the blond ninja for a moment before slapping him upside the head.

"Ow!" Naruto said, rubbing his ear. "What was that for?!"

"Explain it to him, Anko," Orochimaru said, his eyes locking on his student.

"I'm not sure I see it either, sensei," she said cautiously, poised to dodge if he tried to hit her as he had Naruto. "Sure, it's much better than a bow—longer range, higher fire rate, and you can carry more of the ammunition—but it doesn't change the fundamental equation. Civilians aren't a threat to ninja because we move too fast for them to target at range, they can't stand up to us in close combat, and we have long-range and area-effect jutsu that let us take them out pretty much at will."

Orochimaru stared at her in disappointment and sighed. He set the weapon on the table and stepped to the line of training dummies so that he could unclasp the samurai back-and-breast clamshell from the one on the end. Turning, he held it out to Anko. "What do you think of this?" he asked.

She took it from him and frowned, inspecting the thing, holding it out to examine it from all angles. "I don't see anything," she said. "What—"

BAM!

Anko vanished, her contingent kawarimi switching her with the nearest training dummy; the bullet that had triggered the kawarimi blasted a fist-sized hole out the back of the dummy. The instant that Anko reappeared in the dummy's previous position there was another BAM and the armor jerked in her hands as a bullet passed completely through it.

"Now can you explain it to him?" Orochimaru demanded.

"You son of a bitch!" Anko yelled, hurling the armor down and lunging at him. Orochimaru pivoted smoothly aside and sent her stumbling with a well-timed hipcheck as she passed by.

"That will be enough of that," Orochimaru said calmly. He waved casually towards the woods; a group of six men in woodland camoflage stepped out of the trees and jogged towards them, slinging their rifles over their shoulders as they came.

"Those men are mercenaries from the Republic," Orochimaru said, gesturing at the oncoming group. "They have no chakra; they cannot perform jutsu, kawarimi, shunshin, or even activate a seal. Despite that, each of them has killed more people than most Konoha ninja." He eyed the oncoming soldiers silently for a moment and Team Anko took a moment to join him.

The six were a strange lot; tall men, with a variety of facial features and hair colors that hinted at ethnicities none of the team had ever imagined—one of them even had orange hair and pale skin with brown spots all over it. None of that held their attention, though; Team Anko's eyes was completely locked on the man second from the right.

That worthy was easily six and a half feet tall and heavily muscled; he was in excellent shape, but a trace of a belly and a splash of grey in his hair hinted at the onset of middle age. That hair was dramatic enough: tight to his scalp in a mat of kinky black curls unlike anything the team had ever seen. The strangest thing, though, was that he was literally black. None of the genin had ever seen a person with skin darker than a mild tan; this man seemed like some demon god or monster from legend come to walk the earth, and they all found themselves shivering at the sight. Naruto edged a little closer to Hinata, moving half a step in front of her as the men approached.

"Those men fired from over three hundred yards away," Orochimaru said. "Too far to be detected by any but a very few ninja with unusual sensory abilities and far enough that, had they actually wanted to kill you, you would not have sensed their killing intent. The bullets move too fast to see, much less react to, so ambush is trivial. Ninja are lethal in combat because we can avoid most attacks and our contingent kawarimis generally prevent us from being killed from ambush. Despite that, and again granting a very few exceptions, we still die if you make a hole in us. That shot would have killed a Kage, and it was made by a man you would all foolishly dismiss as a 'civilian'."

"It wouldn't have worked in a real fight," Naruto snapped. "This was just a stupid party trick—you set it up!"

Orochimaru rolled his eyes. "Of course I set it up, idiot," he said. "Do you think your enemies will be polite enough to stand up in plain sight and wave a flag so that you know they're targeting you? You can't maintain a contingent kawarimi while you're asleep, so they'll shoot you then. They'll arrange ambushes like this one with sniper teams; choose a location such that they can predict where your contingent kawarimi will take you, hit you once to trigger it, then shoot you for real when you emerge."

"Not me, sir," said the lead soldier as they drew into earshot. "I've seen you lot fight, and I'll pass. Few dozen daisycutters on your villages, that'd be the way to go."

Orochimaru nodded politely. "Indeed. Thank you, Sergeant." He turned to Shino. "Child of the Aburame, I put this to you: the Republic possesses vehicles that can fly higher than you can see, and they can drop weapons on you that will destroy everything in a circle two miles across. How would you oppose such a people?"

Shino shifted uncomfortably. "Are these weapons in limited supply?" he asked.

Orochimaru glanced over at the leader of the soldiers. "Sergeant?"

The man shrugged. "Not common, no, but this just ain't that big a country. If the 'Pubs decided to get busy, they've got more than enough daisies to flatten every ninja village five times over and still have enough left to take out all the major cities. And that's before we get to the nukes."

Shino nodded slowly. "In that case, they would find it straightforward to destroy our logistics," he said. "Manufacturies, ports, major population centers, dams, and river locks; even if we still had an effective fighting force, we wouldn't be able to feed our people. Based on the information I currently possess I feel the Republic would control the strategic fight but we would dominate in tactical battle, espionage, and assassination; as such, we would need to use asymmetric warfare tactics. I would begin with decapitation strikes and attacks against their military infrastructure, especially the manufacturies for these 'daisycutters'."

"In such a battle, gaining the first strike would be tremendously important," Hinata said quietly. "If they can truly destroy our cities so easily we would need to have agents in place to assassinate their leadership should they decide to order such an attack."

Orochimaru's lip twisted in sour amusement. "Harder than it might seem, I'm afraid," he said. "You may have noticed that our friends here have an unusual appearance. We are just as distinctive in their country, meaning that it is necessary to stay under a henge at all times. Furthermore, they don't speak our language, so an agent will need to first learn English sufficiently well to pass as a native; given that it uses several phonemes that do not appear in our language, that is a highly non-trivial process. Once that's done, the problems are only beginning; their culture is wildly different from ours, and even their schoolchildren have a grasp of mechanismics that dwarfs that of the greatest expert in the Elemental Nations. Furthermore, they have a level of civilian bureacracy that I find astounding; everyone is required to have identification papers and a paper trail follows you everywhere. It makes it hard to stay out of sight."

Anko eyed him suspiciously. "You seem very knowledgeable about this, sensei..." she said.

He smiled and gave her a tiny half-nod. "After my unfortunate departure from Konoha, I spent several years in the Republic. I was only able to do so by remaining constantly on the move and away from any form of authority. Made it infeasible to establish any sort of cover that would allow me to stay near their leadership. Getting sleeper agents in place to decapitate a Republic first strike would be effectively impossible without decades of preparation."

"Ah," Hinata said faintly.

Orochimaru gave her an amused glance. "Indeed," he said. "Of course, you're all missing the obvious: these weapons render the Republic forces utterly superior to any non-ninja force the Elemental Nations can mount. Our ninja forces are the only thing that could oppose them for long, and there's...what? A hundred thousand of us in Fire Country? Maybe two hundred thousand? Maybe a million of us in the entire Elemental Nations, and that's counting students and retirees. Nine years ago, the Republic finished a decades-long war of conquest across their continent. They have a standing army of three million highly trained and veteran troops, equipped with weapons vastly superior to the ones I'm showing you. If they decide to, as Sergeant Hyland so colorfully put it, 'get busy' with us, the Elemental Nations will be crushed like an egg beneath a hammer."

He paused to let that sink in, then smiled brightly. "Now, there's a few more items I'd like to demonstrate for you," he said. "Specifically, the 'hand grenade', the 'flamethrower', and the 'claymore mine'. Sergeant, if you would?"

o-o-o-o

"Would you care for some edamame?" Orochimaru asked politely, offering the bowl in both hands.

"No, thank you," Naruto said. He stirred the bowl of ramen in front of him doubtfully but didn't taste it.

Orochimaru sighed. "I believe we had this coversation," he said. "The food isn't drugged, because I have no reason to drug you. If I wanted you dead, you couldn't stop me. If I wanted any of your secrets, you couldn't stop me; fortunately for you, you have no secrets that I'd be even vaguely interested in. Eat your ramen."

"I'm not hungry," Naruto said mulishly, pushing the bowl away. "Why didn't you want to invite the others, anyway?"

Orochimaru shrugged and went back to eating his sushi. "I didn't invite Anko because she's too suspicious of me and too intolerant. Whenever her underlings start thinking or talking along lines she disapproves of she tends to cut them off instead of debating with them on rational lines, and I want you to actually consider what I have to say before she influences you."

Naruto watched him, narrow-eyed. "I'm not going to let you drive a wedge between me and my sensei," he said.

Orochimaru shrugged again. "Believe what you like; I'm simply stating facts. I trained that girl since she was in a training bra and I know what her failure modes are."

"Uh-huh," Naruto said doubtfully. "What about the others? What's so secret that you couldn't invite them, huh?"

"I wanted to talk to you about Hinata-san, and I thought it would be better to do it in private," Orochimaru said. "I didn't invite Hinata-san because we'll be talking about her, and I didn't invite Shino-san because the fact that he's in love with her and jealous of you would interfere with his thinking."

"Buh...wha...what do you mean he's...huh?" Naruto said.

Orochimaru looked at him in mild surprise. "You weren't aware? You really should ask Anko for more social awareness training. It's a major weakpoint of yours."

"I don't— I mean...what do you mean he's in love with her?!" Naruto said. "He's not in love with her."

"As you say," Orochimaru said casually, going back to eating his sushi. "In any case, do you value Hinata-san's life?" he asked casually, eyes on his plate.

"Is that a threat?" Naruto demanded. "I don't care who you are, if you threaten Hinata-chan—"

Orochimaru waved dismissively. "I'll take that as a yes, then. Tell me, if that's the case, what is your plan to deal with her abuse situation? I quite like the girl and I'd be willing to help so long as I can do so within the constraints of my office."

Naruto blinked. "What?"

Orochimaru sighed. "I'm the Kage of Sound," he explained patiently. "As much as I like Hinata-san personally, I'm not going to do anything that puts any of my people at risk. Now, what's your plan?" He watched Naruto expectantly for a moment and frowned when no response was forthcoming. "You do have a plan, right?" he asked.

"I...uh...of course I have a plan!" Naruto said. "But I'm not going to tell you, now am I?"

"Ugh," Orochimaru said in disgust. "You're a terrible liar. You have no plan." He sighed. "Very well. I'll be upfront—I think the girl should defect. Obviously, I'd prefer that it was to Sound but, if you aren't comfortable with that, she could go to any other ninja village. There isn't a one of them that wouldn't be delighted to have a Byakugan user, particularly a young female with plenty of years of fertility remaining. She'd never survive going missing-nin, so you'll either need to get the Hokage's permission, or you'll need to fake her death. I'm willing to help in either case—again, so long as it doesn't violate the duties of my office."

"Why are you being so helpful?" Naruto asked suspiciously.

Orochimaru shrugged. "There's no way for me to lose in this situation. If you refuse my help, it costs me nothing. If you accept my help and go to another village, you and your teammates and sensei will all owe me a favor. If you accept my help and come to Sound, I'll gain a young female Byakugan user, the jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails, probably an Aburame and Anko, and you'll all owe me a favor. No matter what happens, I either win or at least don't lose."

"You're very upfront about this," Naruto said slowly.

"Is there a reason I shouldn't be?" Orochimaru asked. "As I said, I can't lose here. It's simpler if you understand that, so that you'll have reason to accept my help and thereby get me to one of my 'win' conditions."

He ate another maki and took a sip of his sake. "I admit, I considered abducting the child and forcibly using her as a broodmare," he said casually. "That seemed suboptimal, though—she would most likely be unwilling to teach her children how to use their bloodline and I would need to waste resources guarding her instead of having her services as a loyal ninja. No, much better if I simply make you all acknowledge the fact that coming to Sound is your best choice."

He took another casual sip of his sake before glancing up at Naruto's shocked expression.

"Oh," Orochimaru said. "Right...that was probably frightening, wasn't it? I shouldn't have admitted considering the abduction plan." He shook his head in annoyance. "You neurotypical types are so frustrating; I can't simply be honest with you because you can't even be honest with yourselves. The whole point of my statement was to show that I had already considered and discarded the idea; it was intended to be reassuring." He sighed. "My apologies for offending your sensibilities," he said grudgingly. "Rest assured, I have no intention of following through on that plan. It would be too high a risk and require too many resources to justify the return."

"You can't— That's just— Gah! Are you crazy?!" Naruto said.

Orochimaru cocked his head. "It depends on your definitions, I suppose," he said thoughtfully. "Psychopathy is usually listed as a mental illness, yes, but insanity is defined as 'mental illness of such a degree that a person is subject to uncontrollable behavior, cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, or cannot conduct his affairs.' I meet none of those criteria so, on balance, I would have to say that no, I am not crazy."

Naruto stared at him, mouth gaping open.

"What?" Orochimaru asked with a shrug. "I simply find that my psychopathy grants me access to options that you neurotypical individuals won't let yourselves consider." He shrugged helplessly. "Honestly, I don't know how you people manage. I mean, most of you have these thoughts, but you don't let yourself even think about them and then you feel guilty about having them. How can you consider yourselves sane when you censor your own thoughts and then punish yourselves for doing so?"

Naruto stared at him, mouth gaping open.

Orochimaru sighed. "I think we're done here," he said, standing up and rummaging in his wallet for some coins to cover the meal. "I had been hoping to discuss specifics, but since you have no plan I suppose it will have to wait. I assume you can find your way back?" He waited for Naruto's assent before giving the young genin a polite nod and shunshining away.

o-o-o-o

It's essentially impossible to sneak up on a Byakugan user, so it was not surprising that Hinata was waiting at the door of the cottage with a big smile when Naruto walked in.

Naruto smiled back and hugged her for a long moment before stepping back, her hands clasped in his. "Hinata-chan, could I talk to you?" he asked hesitantly.

"Of course," she said. "What about?"

Naruto shook his head. "Not here," he said. Leaning past her he called into the main area of the house. "Sensei, is it okay if Hinata-chan and I sit on the roof? If we see anyone coming we'll get right back inside, I promise."

Anko appeared in the doorway to the living room, eyeing the young ninja consideringly. She studied Naruto's imploring face for a moment and then nodded. "All right," she said. "Don't leave the roof, keep a watch out, and leave the front door open so you don't have to waste time opening it."

Naruto nodded gratefully and tugged Hinata up onto the roof. Despite her confusion, she followed along willingly enough.

They settled together on the ridgeline, sitting close enough that their legs touched. Naruto fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment before finally turning to Hinata.

"Hinata-chan," he said. "I...wow, this is hard. Okay, I had a really weird conversation with Snake-sama, and I think you should hear about it, but I'm worried that it's going to make you angry or uncomfortable. Is it okay for me to tell you?"

Hinata studied him, frowning. "Of course," she said. "Naruto-kun, you can always tell me anything. I trust you, and I promise I won't blame you for whatever it is. I'll try not to get angry, too."

Naruto didn't look very reassured. "Right," she said, taking a deep breath. "Okay. So, first, I have a confession to make..." He fell silent, dropping his eyes to his hands as he picked nervously at a loose thread on his sleeve.

Hinata waited for him to continue, but he didn't. After several long seconds she gathered up her courage and reached out, gently lifting Naruto's head and turning it to face her. White eyes met sea-blue and she smiled. "It's all right, Naruto-san," she said reassuringly. "I promise. Just tell me—whatever this confession is, it can't be that bad."

The blonde genin swallowed nervously. "Well," he said. "I was talking with Orochimaru-sama, and he asked me what my plan was to help you. And I realized that...I didn't have one. That I hadn't even thought about it. I'm really sorry, Hinata-chan, it was thoughtless and mean and I really should have, and I'm sorry but—"

She placed her hand softly over his. "Sshhh," she said quietly. "It's all right, Naruto-kun," she said. "I think you're thoughtful. What plan was he talking about, though? A plan to help me finally become a good ninja?"

Naruto's mood changed instantly, flipping from 'chagrin' to 'anger' so fast that Hinata startled back. "Cut that out!" Naruto snapped. "You are a good ninja, so stop doubting yourself! How many times do we have to tell you this until you believe it?!"

"Eep!" she said, shrinking away from his sudden fury. "I'm s-s-sorry!" she said.

Naruto deflated and scrubbed his face tiredly with one hand. "I'm sorry, Hinata-chan," he said. "I shouldn't have snapped. But you need to accept it: you are a good ninja. A very good ninja. And no, not just because of your Byakugan!" he said, cutting off the words she was opening her mouth to say. "Shino-kun explained it to you, and you believed him. You believed what Anko-sensei told you when she gave you your hitai-ate back. Why won't you just accept it?" He rested his hands loosely on her biceps and pretended to shake her back and forth. "Believe it, woman!" he commanded, mock-seriousness in his voice.

Hinata got into the spirit of the jest, letting her head bobble back and forth as she grinned. After a minute they both stopped and she smiled shyly at him. "I'll try," she said. "If it wasn't that, though, what was it?"

"Um...your family," Naruto said. "He was saying that you should defect in order to get away from them. He's willing to help you come here, or to any other village. He said it's because, no matter what, he wins—if you come here, then he gets a Byakugan user and if you go somewhere else then we owe him a favor for helping." He hesitated for several long seconds before forcing himself to continue. "He...um...he said that he'd considered just kidnapping you and...um...uh...making you have kids? But don't worry, he decided not to!" Naruto raised his hands placatingly as Hinata's eyes got wide and panicked. "He said that it wasn't the smart play, so he decided to convince you instead."

"Oh," said Hinata, shivering slightly as her body struggled to call back the adrenaline that had just flooded her system. "Do you believe him?"

Naruto hesitated for a moment before nodding. "Yeah," he said. "I do. He was very upfront about everything—the fact that he could kill me if he wanted to and so on. He's creepy as hell, but it's reassuring in a weird way—we all know that he's so much stronger than us that there's no point in even fighting and, because we all know it, we don't have to fight. It's a little weird and, like I said, definitely creepy, but it's kinda nice, too. I feel like I always know where I stand with him."

She nodded slowly. "All right," she said. "What do you think I should do?"

Naruto's eyes went wide. "Hey, don't ask me! This is your life, I just thought you should kn—" He paused and took a breath. Taking her hands, he looked at her seriously. "I think you should do it," he said. "I know you're telling yourself that your Dad just wants to train you, but the truth is that he's going too far. Let your sister be the heir, just...come away."

"But...my friends, my family," Hinata said. "If I defected, I'd never see them again."

Naruto's face flickered with pain. "I know. The village is full of my precious people—Jiji, our classmates...even Sasuke-teme. But that's just it: they're all there, together. They'll support each other, and they can defend themselves from whatever comes. You can't; your father is too powerful and he'll never stop. Eventually, he'll go too far and hurt you permanently, or maybe even kill you." He gave her a lopsided smile. "Besides, it doesn't have to be forever. Maybe we can stay here for a while and talk to Jiji; if he can do something to get Hiashi-sama to back off, maybe we can go back."

She shook her head sadly. "No. They'd never trust us again. If we leave, we can't go back."

"Anko-sensei went back," Naruto pointed out. "They accepted her."

"She wasn't a ninja when she left," Hinata said. "And she was strong, so strong that Hokage-sama didn't want to lose her potential." Her face twitched and she swallowed the lump in her throat. "Besides, if I went back I'd be placed under the Caged Bird Seal," she said. "I don't want that."

Naruto cocked his head in confusion. "What's the Caged Bird Seal?" he asked.

"My family is...unusual," Hinata said. "There's the main house and the branch house. Everyone in the branch house is given the Seal. Any main house member can activate a Caged Bird Seal in order to cause intense pain or death in the wearer. The Seal can't be removed without killing the person who wears it."

The horror in Naruto's eyes stabbed her in the heart and made her look down; it didn't help, of course; she could still see his expression with her Byakugan.

"That's messed up," Naruto said.

Hinata nodded, not raising her head. "Yes," she said. "I used to imagine that when I became the clan head, I would do away with the practice. As I got older, I realized that I'd never be able to—the clan elders wouldn't allow it." She paused before continuing in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. "It's evil," she said. "It makes me ashamed to be a Hyuuga."

Naruto slipped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight, not saying a word.

Unnoticed by the blond genin, a kikai bug crawled out of one of the tied-open canteens that he wore on his back and flew off.

Author's Note:

The tech level in the Naruto-verse is bizarre, and it's a big enough mess that I figure I better explain what I'm doing to make it make sense.

If you google for 'naruto tech level stackexchange' and click the top link you'll see part of an interview with Kishimoto (the creator of Naruto) where he states that "Actually, the world of Naruto doesn't differ very much from our present time. TV, refrigerators and air conditioners exist in the world. The only exceptions are weapons and explosives, which I've decided to set in a much earlier era. That's why you don't see firearms."

Among the things we do see are: TVs, VCRs, wireless headset radios, references to cell phones, computers, and satellite dishes. And yet, no firearms or non-chakra explosives.

This is baloney. Technology doesn't work like that; you can't drop out part of virtually every scientific field, wave your hands around, and say "well, no one thought of it." Even if you could, it wouldn't work: if you have satellites (for the satellite dishes) then you must have rockets. Rockets are effectively giant bombs that go off slowly, so if you have rockets then you have explosives. And, in case anyone wants to argue 'well, they were radar dishes, not satellite dishes!1!' just...don't. If you understand chemistry enough to build things like batteries for cell phones then you understand it enough to make high explosives.

In a world where ninja are a thing and go around intimidating and assassinating people, civilians are going to look for an equalizer, and if explosives are a thing then non-ninja are going to weaponize them for their own protection, so guns and explosives will exist. If guns and explosives exist, ninja would carry them—sure, jutsu and explosive tags let them do the same jobs without the equipment, but (a) there don't seem to be any jutsu with the same kind of range that a sniper rifle gives you, (b) guns don't require you to burn your own chakra, and (c) a chakra sensor ninja or those with various bloodlines can spot an explosive tag by its chakra signature. Landmines and IEDs have no chakra signature. Since sealing scrolls are a thing, there's no reason each ninja wouldn't be carrying an entire platoon's worth of heavy ordinance, just in case it was useful.

To resolve this I've decided that the existence of chakra in the Elemental Nations means that their tech development took a different route from the real world. Much of it consists of civilian-usable jutsu—generally simple, low-powered jutsu that aren't combat useful. (Think 'cantrip' from D&D.) The devices are all chakra-based—dishwashers and air conditioners exist, but they run on chakra magic, not science. They are generally powered from chakra batteries, physical devices that anyone with chakra can charge up.

Chakra is distributed on a bell curve—everyone has a little, most people have some, and a few people have a lot. Only people with above-average chakra become ninja (with the exception of Lee, of course), but not every high-chakra person is a ninja. Most people can keep one or two batteries topped up on their own, and that's enough for a modest lifestyle—a couple of lamps and a fan, maybe. If they want more than that (fridge, aircon, chakra oven), then they need to pay a high-chakra person to charge extra batteries for them. 'Chakra battery-filler' is a respected and lucrative profession, which means that most people with the chakra to do the job tend to move to the city where they can get lots of business, so small towns and (non-ninja) villages typically won't have more than one or two. Combine that with the uncommon nature of high-chakra individuals and access to chakra batteries is limited for most people. (Ninja villages, of course, will have vast amounts of tech, since they have enormous amounts of energy available from between-missions or REMF ninja. Almost everyone in Konoha has multiple chakra lamps, a fridge, an air conditioner, a chakra oven, and various other things.)

This chakra-tech ruling allows us to have modern technology but not an overpowering amount of it—the stuff is available, it's just hard to get enough energy to run it unless you won the genetic lottery, live next to a ton of people who did, or have enough money to pay for frequent top-ups. Tech refinement has largely focused on making things more chakra-efficient instead of creating non-chakra versions. The devices we see in canon (e.g., the outboard motor in the Wave arc) that look like technology are the chakra-powered versions—that outboard ran on chakra batteries, not on gasoline.

Okay, but if not everyone can get access to the cool chakra tech, why aren't they developing non-chakra tech? Answer: A combination of cultural inertia and outright suppression; the various daimyo understand very well that technology is a destabilizing force and they like the current system, where they're on top and there's little risk of revolution since the common people lack access to sufficient chakra to make regular use of military-grade chakra weapons.

The suppression is subtle—grants are given out for working on chakra-tech, but not for 'mechanismics' (a neologism meaning "tech that isn't based on chakra"). Prestigious scientists and research journals are subtly encouraged to poo-poo and/or not publish mechanismic science. A few mechanismic toys are released, but carefully controlled to look cheap and ridiculous, cementing the idea in people's heads that non-chakra tech is worthless and inferior.

Contrast this with the Republic, the country across the sea. The Sage didn't cross any oceans when he was handing out chakra, so the Republic's citizens don't have chakra. Their tech development proceeded along relatively real-world lines. Until now the Republic has been very isolationist, hence why they haven't discovered the Elemental Nations before now. The isolationism is starting to change, which is why a few traders are coming across the sea, a trickle of modern mechanismic tech is making it into the Elemental Nations, and views about such tech are slowly starting to shift.

I am ruling that electronic gear is something that comes from the Republic, so the radios and computers that we see in canon come from across the ocean. Furthermore, if you check the 'List_of_Technology" page on the Naruto wiki (Google for 'naruto tech level' and click the top link), under 'Trivia' you'll see "Kishimoto specified the computers would 'maybe' be eight-bit and that they would 'definitely not' be sixteen-bit." The first widespread 8-bit CPU was the Intel 8080 which came out in 1974 so I'm setting the Republic's tech level equal to that of America in 1974. This is actually quite frightening when you think about it; ninja have magic fireballs and knives, the Republic have the B-1B supersonic strategic bomber and nuclear weapons. I thought very seriously about setting the Republic's tech level significantly earlier—originally I was going to put it at 1850 or so—but then I decided that no, I'd play straight: Kishimoto made this mess and I'm going to let his characters suffer the fallout.

Oh, speaking of fallout: the daisycutter bomb that Sergeant Hyland was referring to was the BLU-82, a Vietnam-era conventional (non-nuclear) bomb with a reported blast radius of 5000 to 5500 feet, meaning that it destroys a circle roughly two miles across. Check Wikipedia for the details.

Finally, since I know that I'll get snarky reviews about it otherwise: yes, some of the ninja from Kumogakure are black (with white hair, because reasons). As far as I can there are no other black people in the Naruto-verse, and none of the genin on Team Anko have seen a person from Kumo, which is why they were so freaked at the appearance of Corporal Blake.