“I never said you took branch equipment, I merely suggested that if we barged into the basement floors of your home there feels like a 50/50 chance we would either find dangerous and/or morally questionable experiments or the Hoshikage in bondage. It isn’t just Medical Branch resources we have to police, but research in general. Even if they are using their own personal funds and getting resources on their own we can’t let someone research, say, fusing demonic appendages to themselves or others in their own homes without any sort of oversight or regulations enforced and just trusting them to be responsible with it. Since we started officially taking a broader range of research responsibilities in the branch part of our increased percentage of the village budget actually has been spent on different methods to try and make this task of oversight easier.
For instance, a few months ago I used a hefty chunk of our oversight budget to secretly take over and subsidize a rather widely used lab glass brand, making the purchase price a little cheaper to increase its market edge. We are gradually lowering the prices to simply steal the market. We obviously won’t be making much, if any money back from this, but after this initial costly period we will have a self funded mechanism keeping tabs on who is ordering what sort of test tubes and glass containers and such in this country. In two quarters I plan to do the same with a couple chemical suppliers.
As for the matter of how much you make… Sensei, a ramen shop has greater profits than our branch. A few months back we sold those morons at the Lightning Navy academy a self breaking, warranty voiding, proof of concept artillery cannon for an astronomical sum and we had the profits budgeted for two new fully equipped clinic front safe houses in the south and the rest to various labs within a week. Our branch eats money as fast as we can get our hands on it, and it took me most of the first year of my current position just to make the budget break even, or at least close to it. We had been going well into the hole.” A tendril seemed to be rummaging in a filing cabinet while they spoke and pulled out the expenditures summary of that first quarter where the Med Branch took on most of the village research and laid it in front of Kitsune and tapped at a rather horrifying set of numbers that would make anyone with even the slightest attachment to money feel ill. Even worse, it could eat the income listed for the quarter several times over.
“If I threw a ten yen coin into the hall some researcher would pop up claiming it for research funds. That’s the biggest reason I am shoving research missions down the throats of anyone who comes asking for funds to study whatever obsession currently occupies them be studying and the items they need…” Osu paused to glance at a couple random requests his tendrils were sorting through. “A living giant snail from the poison lake region of the heartland jungle to study the medicinal properties of monstrous snails or… Hmm? A toothbrush that has been used by a fully developed, purple haired Chigokai? All it says here is genetics research… I suppose that isn’t a hard one to fulfill, though I can’t really understand why he needs it. Where were we? Ah yes.
As for the people who still distrust you after what, about 16 years now?… To be fair Sensei the people who died that day were well respected and had their followers. I mean I might not agree with the isolationist and oddly haphazard politics of that particular Raikage but there is the respect for the office. If someone kept quiet about your murderer for a time and allowed them to become your replacement before they brought the truth forward... I might eventually be willing to forgive them, but I would likely never forget. It is simply one of those things you have to live with. I have my own oddly growing list of critics, the main branch sennin is very public about her distaste for me it seems, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why that started. It began when I was still simply a mednin even so it isn’t the fact I am young for my rank with her at least… though I have always had a lot of criticism for that…”
Osu took this opportunity to look over this kinjutsu registration before sighing. “It is always strange when a new one pops up, several people typically show similar signs and symptoms in the same few years. If I didn’t know any better I would say we were in a computer program or such and these are the result of some sort of update… That would make an interesting movie premise… anyway does this mean you will no longer get that noticeably disgusted face when you happen to see into the small openings of my skin and see underneath?” Osu asked amusedly while a patch of flesh on his face peeled back and a writhing mass of blood vessels coiling around each other and slowly start wiggling their way out the opening of his face before the skin returned to its place and the blood vessels retreated.
“I remember that the first few occasions you looked a bit spooked and a vaguely remember a term something like eldritch horror tossed in. I was vaguely hurt, but after a while I took amusement in it something similar to probably what you show when Hisako used to sneak up on me.
But yes, if you swear that you will uphold the dignity of the position, that you will enforce the laws and regulations of the village and branch as well as the orders handed down to you, that you will not try and advertise your beloved student as an all you can eat for vampires, etc etc, yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill, then yeah I can give you your rank of Med Chief back. I swear the lot of us are going to be accused of nepotism.” Osu sighed.
“So to distract people from that I am happy to say I already have a few research missions to shove down your thr- for you to look into. I have a list of things that work in theory but lacking the time to handle them personally, I have the issue of few researchers in the branch being as handy with working with electronics. We are still expanding the general education so most are still solely dedicated to more biological pursuits.” It didn’t help that the rules of the world itself had some limitations on technological boundaries not that Osu not anyone else realized this.
“The first thing I have for you to help me with is… well weather forecasting. I managed to rip a rather lucrative research contract from the hands of the Naval Academy after they were failing to show much progress with it to the Shogunate. We are going to be designing, testing, then deploying radars in researched locations to collect, map, and centralize meteorological data for the country and so far into our surroundings, with the final goal being to possess enough data for professionals to be able to create a seven day forecast with a targeted 85% accuracy. As well as some sort of catchy name like nexrad or such. The most important aspect is to make sure that if when we are done and they possibly attempt to hand over management of the system to the Navy or such, they will just so happen to ‘break it themselves’ when they inevitably try to take them apart to see how they work and ‘void the warranty’. Hear me clearly, they will end up ‘breaking it themselves’ with ‘no doubts to anyone’ as to the fact ‘they broke it’ to the point of being able to fix it, in other words trashing any attempt to reverse engineer the system but making it not look like deliberate sabotage.. I will be sure to include in the fine print that attempts of self maintenance of internal components will, of course, void the warranty.”
Osu sipped a cup of tea that was randomly passed to him by one of the many threads still working about while they spoke. He had been ripping every yen he could from various government organizations and making cruel use of the warranty system a lot these past couple years. In the Navy alone, there were seven high ranking individuals in both the academy and active military duty that had sworn blood feuds against him personally, and one older read admiral swearing to haunt Osu after being ripped off thrice and being forced to retire due to declining health from all the rage and stress.the worst part was that the products worked exceptionally well and exactly as promised so long as they didn’t try and take them apart themselves. But the moment they did it always spelled the end of the machine and had to pay even more than they originally did for a replacement. One senior researcher had even tried to physically assault Osu in a meeting after finding out that the cost of a replacement had mysteriously tripled after calling Osu ‘Jashin himself.’
“There isn’t a huge rush of course, we have 13 months until they expect a mostly finished and working device for examination before we create a network of them. Do expect saboteurs as well, for some reason many people have been making vague comments when they see me. ‘You will have your due soon.’ ‘Do not expect to keep getting your disgusting tendrils into every pocket you can.’ ‘Damn you Chigokai Osuteno, if I must, as Rear Admiral of the 3rd fleet, I will use my own two hands to destroy every project you steal from us.’ And other such subtle messages. Really, I can’t understand why everyone gets so worked up. And if I express my concern and offer to look into their health, they simply get worse. Two of them even coughed blood then had the gall to berate me and question my sanity. Can you believe rejecting medical care with such poor health?” Osu shook his head with an expression like he wasn’t the cause for their attitudes.
Kitsune had business with her minion. Or would that be former minion now that Osuteno was running the hospital itself, which was usually reserved for the Sennin. Well. Kitsune had finally gotten fed up with the paperwork she had to deal with for simple requisitions that she, had she been more assertive in getting her Mednin Chief rank back, would’ve been able to just command be delivered. So, who better to fix this than Osuteno. She knocked on the door to his office and entered.