Ryuzetsu was sitting inside the allocated room of the current base of operations while waiting for Hiroshi to call for her assistance in another experiment that practically became a norm for lately.
Usually, she was out. Enough freedom was given to her to leave whenever she wanted. She had been in the village the past few days, overlooking the progress and restoration of the prison. As long as she showed up from time to time and helped with some tasks, mostly concerning the experiments conducted by Hiroshi, her new position had turned out less time-consuming and strict than she expected. But even if the time spent here was not long, it overcompensated for it with how draining the experiments were.
Watching the scientist play with people’s lives was not a pleasant experience, even if she was a ninja. Having to watch them be killed for ultimately her to revive them and die again and again was even more straining.
It all began when she finished setting things up in the Grass. As much as she disliked how the situation had been dealt with, the plan was decisive at least. And while it created a mess, she wouldn't disagree that the faster they would cut off the tumor plaguing the body, more chance it would have to recover.
There was still the chaos that followed the village as an aftermath of such bloody event that she had to been left deal with, but internal opposition was not hard to deal with when you had the necessary backing. Even though there was a lot of work that her lady and Flowers of Grass had to deal with, they could at least rest easy that power-hungry bastards no longer held significant rein on the village’s poetics, while the corruption had been noticeably decreasing as a result. The only thing to be concerned about was external interference from the five great villages, but while they would undoubtedly cause some complications, there was but a low risk of any drastic actions from them. Politics were normally a way of pressuring your opponent into giving in while trying to act as subtle as possible, and Lady was competent enough to handle the situation, or at least buy enough time to find the solution.
She helped as much she could and set up contact between the lady and Kakuzu. When she made sure that the situation in the village was stable enough, that her death wouldn't cause issues, it was time to fulfil her side of the bargain.
It was an experiment that very well could take her life. Maybe it was lucky that she didn't have many attachments aside from the village, as she could step into the laboratory without much regret.
“Give me your hand.” Kakuzu said to her as she took a seat in one of the lab chairs. “Choose which one you prefer. This will be painful, but it doesn’t pose a threat to your life.”
He then explained to her what the first stage of the experiments entailed. Basically, a body modification that would alter her arm. She remembered seeing changes that Moroi had gone through. Not a pleasant sight, she noted. Neither crawling inside the body of someone else especially exited her. at least, they could replicate a biological clone of hers so it wouldn't feel as revolting to possess what basically would be created from her own blood if it went to that point. What Moroi had been given was an imperfect replica of his body, but functional enough to combine with those tentacles of his and pilot the flesh suit. Not gross at all. But thankfully, she wasn't going to go through the full modifications, apparently it was something about being unsuitable with a Kekkei genkai. Turns out, if you take a body with a bloodline limit and completely change the essence of their genetics, the said bloodline limit wouldn't carry on. Not so fortunately for her, modifying just an arm wouldn't cause much issue in that regard.
The process was painful, she had to agree. Even though she had been injected with anesthetics, she could somehow still feel the damn pain. Having your limb broken down fundamentally and then morphed into something significantly different was not a pleasant experience, it seemed. It honestly felt like a nightmare. But she had experienced a fair share of nightmares throughout her life, forcing her mind to either snap or adapt and endure. As far as she knew, she hadn't yet gone crazy, so the modification wasn't something she couldn't bear.
The process was over not long after and she had been given a few days to rest and adapt to the change.
The new arm, as one would assume would happen if your limb was turned into a mass of countless lively tentacles, felt completely different, even more so than she had expected. It took time to adapt to it, but it was somehow… well, unnaturally natural with how it functioned. She guessed that her brain still had trouble processing the changes.
It wasn't like it would always be in this state of wriggliness either. The outer layer of her arm that had been set aside before the modifications began acted like a glove, more or less feeling similar to what normal hand felt, as long as she didn't lose control over them. It took concentration at first, but now it was just a subconscious action.
With a one glance, her left arm didn't look like an offspring of Chutlhu, but just a hand with some scars and stiches. Her skin had mostly been left untouched. There was a line on her wrist which could open up and spew those things, but when she kept the arm together, it didn't feel much different than a normal one.
She did a few checkups with the scientist before the time for the experiment had come. Unsurprisingly, it was about her kekkei genkai. It was a power that few had awakened in their family line, and not one that her ancestors considered themselves to be fortunate to possess.
Her clan's Kekkei Genkai gave the user the ability to transfer their vitality into others, healing them and even allowing an act of bringing the dead back to life, as long as they had been recently fallen, but in exchange for their life. That was pretty much how most of the clan members in possession of the Kekkei Genkai died. Being forced to sacrifice their lives and not even leaving them a chance of survival. There was no way to stop the vitality to completely being drained once they casted the jutsu and opened the channel through their heart. The moment that happens, the caster's life-force would be continuously transferred to the target, until they would ultimately succumb the exhaustion and fall.
So, it seemed that she was going to die. She wasn't sure if their meeting was lucky for her or not, but her life was a cheap price to pay if it meant avoiding the village's pointless demise. She was basically colluding with a criminal. But when it came down to things like that, this world was quite flexible in that regard. As long as you have power, that is. It wasn't much of a secret than Akatsuki had been hired by the great five nations, so it wasn't far off to what those great nations had been already doing all this time.
Well, somehow, she survived the experiments. She didn't expect to come out alive, nor to hold her life in high regards when she was so close to death. More that she gave credit for so far, it seemed. It felt good to feel alive. But the same couldn't be said for the people who paid with their life.
The experiment wasn't anything particularly complex. All she had to do was use her transformed arm and stab the tentacles into the hearts of the subjects strapped into the chairs close by. She had to connect her chakra with it, to open the channels that kept their life-force and draw their vitality instead of her own to use her Kekkei Genkai. In front of her, third subjects sat, unable to move, see, hear or even feel anything.
“Well then, miss Ryuzetsy. Are you ready to begin?” She heard Hiroshi ask while waving his hand at her.
Ryuzetsu simply nodded at Hiroshi's words and sat into chair while taking the glove of her left arm. She breathed in and concentrated on her arm. Her wrist wriggled and a bunch of black tentacles came out of it and positioned themselves. It took quite a long time to control them properly. She had to be careful to not immediately kill the two as she stabbed them. Connecting to their chakra system and opening their channels took even more effort. Eventually though, she managed to stabilize their condition.
“Let's begin.” Hiroshi announced and after making sure that Ryuzetsu was ready, he took out a small surgical knife from his pocket and approached the subject in front of her. Then, he sliced the subject's throat as one of the assistants started the timer. When the subject was finally dead, she directed mass if the tentacles to carefully pierce the subject and activated her kekkei genkai.
She almost died. Even though she managed to draw vitality from the two subjects, and even though she didn't open the channel through her heart, her vitality still began to drain rapidly. She barely managed to disconnect her chakra from the two. All of the subjects died, and she immediately passed out.
Still, the scientist seemed to have considered it great progress and insisted on continuing the experiments.
Her control increased as one experiment was followed by another. Dead subjects, few days of rest between the experiments for her vitality to restore, rinse and repeat. She suggested attempting to use the animals as sacrifices. The scientist enthusiastically agreed.
Once again, the attempt was failure and she almost died. Something was different with animals’ physiology that didn't allow her to make use of their life-force. Unfortunately, more people had to die.
She finally made some progress on her sixth attempt. Well, sort of. Man died, awoke and then died once more. Hiroshi had been overjoyed and maniacally began to scribble down something, then asked her a bunch of bizarre questions. Well, it hadn't been long; one normally didn't improve their abilities rapidly. It took time. She only wondered how many lives it would take for her.
That was when a small object began buzzing inside her pocket. A communication device that Kakuzu had given her. Ryuzetsu pulled out a small rectangular object and sent her chakra into it.
“Hello miss Ryuzetsu.” Came the scientist’s voice. “I'm just informing you that there will be no experiments today, unfortunately. However, I do want to get your opinion on something. Can you come to the lab? Oh also, Moroi’s already here. Apparently, Kakuzu wants do discuss something among us.”
