Not Dead Yet [Private]

[Byakko Yukiin]

"Complete nonsense, if this was ever written in a known language it stopped being that way halfway through and changed into picto, litho, and go-fuck-yourself-graphs." Yukiin groaned, the exasperation being extracted from him like a boring leech as the book, the source of the problem, was left to fall to the floor with a hefty thud. Whatever it was supposed to be, it wasn't rational and it wasn't following a patter of writing or language that he could perceive but these were 'extra-curricular' studies to begin with and he probably should've been laying off the Kinjutsu.

Fuuinjutsu, Kinjutsu or Ninjutsu, was a complete mess of a subject as the idea of translating concepts and physical entities into text was already an absurd one but throw into that the prefix of 'forbidden' and it suddenly starts grabbing the reigns and driving itself into the abyss, horse, cart, and rider tumbling far past the senses of anyone but themselves. Perhaps that was what people meant when they referred to the idea that you must enter the abyss to understand it, looking at it only twisted you into what it held and the safer option, counter-intuitively, was to submerge.

A metaphorical 'sink or swim', either it killed you or you...killed it? No, now he wasn't making any sense either.

Yukiin flicked his finger at the book, a current of wind gathering the target parchment collection and moving it back to the shelf. The more he'd developed as a shinobi the less concerned he'd become with wasting chakra, he had an abundance after all and he regenerated and recuperated it before he could exhaust it on most days. He wondered why he'd ever been worried but months prior it had been a more draining task to generate natural forces beyond ice so it must've seemed wasteful, now he was lazily drawing seals in the air out of forming ice that followed his fingertips in the hopes that seeing them physically might help him understand.

It, predictably, didn't...so he allowed the sigils to crumble away into the silver dust that coated most of the area in his apartment as he threw on his coat and retrieved something he was actually supposed to be studying - medical texts. The binder of contents was earmarked here and there because he followed the instructions laid out, to their letter, but so long as Osuteno was going to be giving him free time he was going to be spending it outside of the assignments and on the matter of being more than a man.

After all, once he was 'dead' he had all the time in the world to learn the best way to treat Akimichi indigestion or Yamanaka migraines, all subjects he was obligated to pretend to care about but also subjects which he was bad at feigning interest in.

He moved sluggishly back to the branch offices, stopping at his personal quarters to pick up his to-go coffee, crystallized sticks of concentrated coffee, and place it between his lips like several sticks of pocky as he knocked on the door to his superior's quarters. He thumbed a fresh scalpel in one hand and his 'assignments' in the other, already impatient since he had to take time away from mastering the barrier between life and death to practice mundanities.

"Some of us are still on the mortality clock, I'm sure 'Wartime Poems on the Elegance of Trebuchets' will have plenty of time to be penned by your hand after you've shown me the proper way to cut out my own heart."

Osuteno had insisted that he develop into his own mortality, to enjoy its highs, lows, and eccentricities so really it was nobody's fault but his that the Byakko was now showing remarkable success at acting less like an obedient machine and more like a petulant child.

 

[Osuteno]

“That sarcasm of yours merely lowers your life expectancy you know, and what age do you think this is? Besides, poetry is for people who have to disguise a lack of content with flowery words. This essay is about comparing the methods of designs for different forms of mobile artillery that are starting to see commission by the Lightning Navy, though that bunch is about as likely to blow their own to kingdom come as any Marsh insurgents. They dare compare their Naval Academy labs to mine? I’ll point out all the flaws in their designs and present a cost prohibitive prototype to make their commanders green with envy. A few stellar demonstrations, marking up the price, and failing to include any instructions will lead that bunch to try and take it apart because they are too proud to ask for help, and that is when the cannon is rigged to fall apart completely and crush key components beyond recognition. We will be able to humiliate them and afford a new clinic front in the Capital in a single stroke…” Osu’s unusually aggressive tone made it sound like he was a completely different person to begin with, but soon a more gentle voice like his personality doing a 180 came from the other side of the door. “And this talk of cutting out your own heart, I take it you have been skipping too far ahead in our readings again and have gotten stuck on trying to understand kinjutsu… again. No point in you standing out there sulking, come in.” This feminine and calming voice called Yukiin inside the office, and the faint sound of the door unlocking could be heard as well.

Depending on how quickly Yukiin entered the room, he might see documents being boxed up by stray ‘threads’ and Osu sitting rather passively with a stamp in one hand and a teacup in the other. In a bit of contrast the threads were rather active moving things, writing, or operating a turn crank for some unapparent purpose. Osu’s eyes also seemed to be rather active as they darted this way and that between papers.

“I thought it would be clear by now that one reason they are ‘forbidden’ techniques is that understanding them borders on lunacy if it isn’t well past the line. At least for the ones that aren’t as simple as say… ripping someone’s eyes from their sockets. Those are forbidden in the sense there aren’t many legal opportunities for such things aside from the donor program, where we have far too few to hand them out lightly, or pure dumb luck in the field, the number of bloodliners not belonging to a village being minuscule and the smaller number who happen to be criminals in our jurisdiction.

Even having a general understanding of them doesn’t guarantee success in practice. And there is something oddly metaphysical about what we can do that another reason we classify them the way we do is that they cause such a burden to the abstract ‘soul’ that no one can handle more than one true kinjutsu at a given time. One overrides or prevents the success of the other, or… well some moron once tried to seal a demon inside a hachimon once. The subject exploded. Another reason we go out of our way to stomp out dangerous research not supervised by our own departments, but you will learn more about that side of work once you have progressed far enough in your studies. Speaking of, how far have you progressed in your study of anatomy, or more specifically, how much have you read of Anatomy?” At this question a tendril pick up and loudly dropped the 30+ pound, 7,642 page thick textbook onto a nearby table.

“Since you are so obviously prepared for the next step, I have a little test for you.”

A large chest was pulled from behind a set of filing cabinets by yet another set of tendrils and slid in front of Yukiin. “If you think you are ready, inside this container is a old project of mine for my teacher when I was an MiT. It is a full scale model of the average female skeleton and all of the various organs. When fully put together, with the assistance of straps, magnets, and hooks, it forms a rather nice educational model if I say so myself.

Right now it is completely disassembled inside that box, bones unconnected and even some organs separated into key parts. If you think you are experienced enough, you will open that chest, pick up the pieces one at a time, name everything, state the main purposes of the various organs, and put it together making as few mistakes and as efficiently as possible. About an hour from whenever you open said box to give you some room to breathe and not feel rushed.

If you can do well enough at that, we will move on to practicing with cadavers when you feel comfortable doing so...

Or if you have questions pertaining to the lessons you are supposed to be studying, feel free to take a seat across from me and I will teach as best I can, it is up to you.”

And with that Osu seemingly stopped paying attention to Yukiin and went back to reading over documents and signing and stamping things. He did not say that Yukiin had to do said test here and now but there was a signal of ‘prove you are ready to move on to the next lesson or stop complaining about how slowly you are learning.’

 

[Byakko Yukiin]

"Been there once before, not a very exciting place and I can't see the value in holding onto territory that would sooner sink the supports of any structure you put on top of it then hold a forward operating base or clinic. You're going to need some flowery words of your own to convince anyone its worth the investment, but there have been poorer investments I'm sure. Isn't that shabby looking Head of Instruction and his student still out there anyways, why can't he just level the place and call it a day? A blank slate would be a better place to start then dealing with insurgent counter ops all the time..." The surge of a smoldering emotion in Osuteno was unusual but not excessively distant from his own theories regarding his status, as he had already asserted - there was more man in there then he believed. It was a hypocritical thought process as he considered himself less man than weapon but these two mindsets were, slowly, knitting themselves together into something more stable than teetering from emotional to emotionless. Whether or not this was a benefit to him, it was hard to say, but that shabby looking Marsh Chunnin would certainly approve of it even if he would likely disapprove of the end goal of removing all of the human development in favor of a monstrous status. Maybe it was someone Osuteno already knew and by mentioning him, he afforded the opportunity to illuminate the man's position in the social dynamics between the branches members and, by proxy, the dynamics between Kumogakure's branches at large. He spoke as if it were flippant, an off the cuff remark, but he was intensely curious to probe into the opened wound and see what it might contain.

"No disrespect intended to my superiors, of course." He lied, the man's appearance and disrespect for his position were a sticking point that he would carry with him until it was corrected or until he was in a position to make the correction himself. There was only one way for power dynamics to flow for him after all, and it was upwards.

He entered into the room as he spoke, snapping one of the sticks in his mouth and chewing the contents as he observed the 'man' and his busy-body network of threads that made him wonder just how chakra it took to operate so many moving parts, even at his best moments he could manipulate a pair of puppets, one per hand, for a total of ten strings but perhaps they functioned under very different principles than Kugutsu. If they were extensions of the form then it would be much more like Yukiin manipulating snowflakes, effortless and almost unlimited in quantity, so that would explain their ability to function but each independent task required some amount of chakra that was not insubstantial to function independently like that...just how much energy did he have to burn and how much brain power, perhaps literally, could he divide up? Osuteno tended to be very reserved in displays of power but it certainly did make him curious when these glimmers emerged.

The lecture regarding 'forbidden' status was far less interesting in contrast.

"If they were beyond my scope then I wouldn't have access to them or you'd have stripped them from me already and assigned an ANBU member to execute and collect my own bloodline material; I have complete faith in your ability to assess my inability and risk." The matter of him being killed slid off his tongue with as much discomfort as discussing a type of food he didn't prefer very much. The job of a shinobi required a familiarity with death, some were just on a first name basis.

The anatomy book that was thumped down in front of him though was a much more annoying thing for him trying to grasp the intricacies of chakra, flesh, and soul as the triumvirate force that they were, separate but together, equal and unequal, because it had very few immediate eccentricities. He flicked a finger to one of his scrolls, dumping out a puppet in a puff which was caught on his icy animating strings, clacking to life in a few jagged motions before fluidly flexing its fingers and grasping the tome on its wielder's behalf, holding the pages out for him as he glanced over it.

"Tsurara is assembled in much the same fashion a human body is, albeit with more empty space, so I just considered Kugutsu study as anatomy study. Two birds, one stone...or one book the size of a stone. An hour though? Thats a bit of a rush job, it takes that long to make sure her claws are set properly and won't dislodge any venomous darts when any of the other dozen weapons are deployed but I guess humans don't usually have that problem..."

Yukiin cracked his knuckles, using the puppet's excess of limbs to help him since one hand was busy, and let his own claws slip out as Tsurara' handed the book over to him. With the ends of his talons he could much more precisely thumb through he manual in one hand and with the other direct the tool to its task, which it set to with aplomb.

"A human body contains over 200 bones in it, thankfully the critical ones are easy to identify and assign their proper position. The mandible can only connect to the rest of the skull for example and many others are easy to identify on sight. The vertebrae are numerous but they're like...half the bones...fuck there are a lot of these stupid little things...they support the weapons platform to enable bipedal movement and distribution of weight."

Tsurara clicked away the task, pushing the vertebrae together.

"Coccyx is attached at the bottom, for supporting the body's top heavy status and distributing weight down to the legs so the whole platform is stable, even in motion, and in this case with a modified shape due to sexual dimorphism and reproductive purposes. Really just an inefficient decision there to have two different models when one would suffice but I didn't draft the design document on the human skeletal system..."

The puppet affixed the jawbone back into its sockets, teeth back into their places, and the skull as a whole finally ontop of the arrangement. "Skulls are shields for the central processing unit and sensory input reader, positioned at the top of the body in order to maximize field of view and make reach to this vital area more difficult, easier to counter or defend."

Yukiin seemed to lose interest at this point, resorting to reading out of the book verbatim as the remainder of the skeletal system was attached together and the medical trainee snapped a new stick of caffeine into his mouth, chewing the ice audibly as he stroked his absence of beard thoughtfully. The organs went back into place simply enough, he knew where those went as he had a vested interest in knowing what to cut or pierce and which organs were failing when he poisoned someone but there was one area that he was weak in as it had no bearing to his interests and was not present, in any sense, in a puppet's body.

"...muscles, right. These are a bit more in-depth than my home model..."

Tsurara picked out several simulated muscle chunks, holding them out for the puppeteer to examine. They were largely colored chunks that didn't betray their function as neatly as the rest of the body, if he just tried to snap things on he supposed eventually he'd arrive at the correct conclusion but considering it was practice for his own body and he wouldn't want to do that to himself...maybe it was time to call it a failing, at least in one area.

Yukiin frowned and settled himself to the appointed 'learning chair'.

"I can't, er...I am lacking in some areas vital to this task's successful completion."