[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[1/11] Stepping out of his room at the inn, Ruto squinted his eyes against the bright afternoon sun, tilting his head up just slightly to face it. It had been months since he’d properly seen the sky, as he’d locked himself away within his place of residence to focus heavily on his work. The breakthrough he’d made had been very inspiring.

The conversation he’d had with Kunikunosaku was even moreso, and had caused him to become locked down and committed to it.

He had been applying chakra in a very standardized way, not experimenting with it as much as he could’ve. At the idea of letting the bacteria adapt in multiple environments involving different exposures to chakra, well.. He’d been off to the races.

His room had slowly grown into a proper lab, though a wildly discordant one. Any surface available was now covered with different containment regions for different specimens, generations of bacteria bred under different circumstances, then cross-mutated, then experimented on again. He meticulously documented all of his variables, all the changes, every little detail to ensure replicability and stability.

Today, he finally felt like he could take a step away from his work for a second, because he had made a major development. After months of adjusting and testing and tweaking and working from the second he woke up to the second he went to bed, he had a result he thought he could move to a new phase of testing with.

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[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[2/11] First, he wanted lunch. He’d been sustaining himself on very little over the last few weeks, mostly eating whatever food service could be delivered by the increasingly nervous staff of the inn, who tolerated his presence only very begrudgingly. When they dropped it off they now never waited for him at the door, instead placing it outside, knocking, and scurrying away.

It was probably for the best. His room was something of a biohazard. He went to pains to make sure nothing would escape, cleaning and sanitizing to an almost pathological degree. It was necessary, given what he was creating. If it accidentally escaped the room and infected other patrons of the inn, it could be disastrous. His life rode on all of this going exactly perfectly, on developing something worthwhile and making sure that Ryu would find it appealing.

More importantly, he needed to make sure his continued life was essential to its use. He thought he was already making good progress on that step.

Ruto grabbed a rice and fish dish and some black tea from a local stall and found a nice place in the sun to sit and eat. Once he’d finished, he washed his hands again thoroughly and then returned to the cavelike lab that had become his home. It was time to perform his final test to see if this was ready for implementation.

--- [words: 230] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[3/11] Picking his way carefully through the piles of bacteria, all unique and with their own potential uses that he could sell to Ryu, he found himself standing before the final evolution, his most prized result, the culmination of months worth of sleepless nights and endless dedication.

He hadn’t named it yet. He didn’t know what to name it. It was something that defied identification in a sort of way, as that was the intent of its existence. He thought to himself, wondering how he would pitch this thing to Lord Takigakure if he had to. He ran through the explanation in his mind.

It’s a blank slate bacteria. It grew up fed on my chakra and its structure has become malleable. With the influence of my chakra, it can be adjusted slightly, taking on different traits. Things like symptoms, expression speed, transmissibility… I’m still working on the necessary techniques to make all these changes efficiently, but theoretically speaking we can create a totally custom bacterial infection using these shell bacteria as a base.

Theoretically speaking. That was the thing, wasn’t it? He needed to run more tests on that. He looked to the rats that had been delivered recently, another set in a long line of tragic little critters sentenced to death in his inn. He needed to see for certain if he could influence the bacteria like he wanted. Once he could, he needed to work on the application process. Only then would it truly be ready for Ryu.

--- [words: 252] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[4/11] He prepared several segments of the bacteria, splitting them into separate containers that he could then apply multiple processes to. The first rat would receive the bacteria in its static form, its initial state.

The next two he would apply two different symptom processes to, to see if he could adjust symptom expression utilizing his chakra. Then the next group would get two different expression speeds, fiddling with the bacteria’s reproduction timeline to make one explode with growth immediately while the other remained relatively mild for a short while before suddenly beginning to reproduce.

Testing transmissibility was the most complicated one, really. In this environment, this was the best he could do - turn the symptoms up to a consistent level on each, infect one rat each with the bacteria that had a varied transmissibility, and then toss each rat in with a small group of other rats and see how long it took them to also begin expressing symptoms.

With the experiment set, all there was to do was wait and take notes. He would check on the rats every thirty minutes or so. The rat who had been infected with the rapid expression variant became sick very quickly, within a few hours of contact. The symptoms became somewhat severe quickly.

This was good in one sense, in that he could create a very rapid progression timeline for the disease, but bad in another. The sooner a disease became noticeable, the sooner someone could begin treating it.

--- [words: 247] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[5/11] Fast expression also meant faster death and a lower transmissibility timeline. If the infected person fell ill and died before they could pass it along to another person, then that infection basically didn’t matter at all. The purpose of bacteria was to spread, to make an infected person into a walking weapon against their own town and nation. While quick death surely had its uses, most of the time making something that obvious and that quick to kill would be a waste of the time and risk spent applying that sort of infection.

For that reason, he was sure he would mostly be using the slow expression method, allowing the bacteria time to build and take root before it could begin to show off any symptoms.

The quick-expression rat was dead by the end of the day. The slow-expression rat was still alive and barely symptomatic. That was better.

In the transmissibility chambers, something else interesting was happening. The low transmissibility rat had only infected one of the other rats. The high transmissibility rat had already infected all of the others.

The subject of transmissibility was also a tricky one. If a disease was incredibly catching, it might cause swift notice and doctors would have a chance to begin working on a cure before it could become severe. For something to work, it needed to have a decently high transmissibility while still flying under the radar.

--- [words: 236] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[6/11] It took until the end of the second day for all the high-transmissibility rats to be dead. The first and second infected rats from the other study were also dead at that point, though they had managed to pass along their disease to some of the other remaining rats at that time. By the end of that experiment, two rats remained alive, the only ones that had successfully avoided becoming infected by the low-transmission illness.

This experiment was interesting, but it lacked the subtleties of real life. Caught in close quarters like this, of course the rats would largely pass disease along to themselves.

Ruto thought idly of transmission pathways. There were subtle ways to spread disease. Placing them in water or food sources, infecting surfaces. He’d assessed them when he’d gone to market in town, watching the way livestock mingled with humans, the way sick merchants looking to make money would still go into work. They’d idly touch their faces, touch their wares, share their diseases with anyone who came by and took a look at some knickknack and then went on to go eat a meal in town. So the pathways would continue. Once a disease took hold, that transmission pathway was very reliable.

It was the initiation that could be the inconsistent part. A disease placed into an animal might not catch to a human before the animal could die. A disease placed into water might meet some kind of treatment that would render it inert before it could pass anyone’s lips.

--- [words: 255] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[7/11] What to do about that? He pondered the question as he continued to watch his few remaining rats. The slow-expression rat had finally become sick. At this point it would’ve infected many other rats if it had been given the opportunity, dooming them to their own slow sick development. For now the symptoms would just seem like a common cold, nothing to worry about, nothing to complain to the doctor about. The treatment would be tea and bed rest. Until that treatment was no longer sufficient.

On the fifth day, the rat fell rapidly ill. By the end of that day, it was dead.

The final rat, the control, the one who had been infected with the blank bacteria, had never become ill at all.

Still there it stood, a survivor, uninfected. It seemed like this bacteria had truly become interesting. Without an application of his chakra, it was rendered completely inert.

With interest, Ruto tried now to utilize his chakra to influence the bacteria, and waited again to see if it would do anything.

It didn’t, though. It seemed like once the product had left Ruto’s own body to go out into the world, it was beyond his influence threshold. Anything he wanted to do to it, he’d have to make sure to do while it was still in his hands.

--- [words: 222] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[8/11] That was a disappointing revelation, but there also wasn’t much to be done about it. It made sense, after all. The environment of a new body was completely different to what the bacteria had grown up with. It was attuned to his nature as a host, the warmth and shape of his lungs, the pulses of his chakra. Once it was outside that it no longer had a reason to listen to the influence of his anatomy. It could only grow, wild and uncontrolled.

Ruto didn’t like to acquiesce to such a lack of control, but sometimes these things couldn’t be avoided. When dealing with life as tiny and dangerous and unique as this, it simply wasn’t realistic to micromanage every little thing. The best he could do was influence it and then let it go and develop, spreading as nature had taught it to.

That was fine. He could just pre-plan and finish anything he wanted to do before releasing it to infection. He had other things to worry about anyways.

Things like the transmission pathways. He’d been putting off thinking about it for the last several days as this experiment concluded, but that was something he needed to tackle.

One of the most effective methods for transmitting bacteria was through aerosolizing them. Maybe he could do something more direct with that? He’d trained himself to hold the bacteria within his lungs like a poison. Could he build on that skill?

--- [words: 242] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[9/11] He had learned how to manipulate suiton when he was still a young Chuunin, on the field, not yet totally dedicated to research. He’d been more spiteful and rebellious then, but still just as interested in pathology and all its elements. Infections, symptoms, cures. He’d learned the delicate illness extraction technique then, too. The flushing of poisons out of the body. It was very painful.

Ruto knew the pain reliever technique and he always used it liberally. The people liked him. They thought he was a good doctor. Most of the time, he was. Still, sometimes he imagined not numbing the pain. Sometimes he imagined what it would be like to watch them squirm as he flooded their veins, washing the illness out of their bodies. A scouring.

He rested his hand in his palm, the other idly playing with the inert bacteria’s agar plate. There was no risk of infection here. It hadn’t been treated before it’d been applied to this plate, so it wasn’t infectious at all. Something that lived and died for no purpose.

He took some of it and placed it in water. He breathed it into his lungs. This would begin the process again.

It would take several weeks for enough bacteria to develop for him to test this, so he spent his time resting until then.

--- [words: 222] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[10/11] Ruto went about his business. He allowed himself to actually leave the inn every now and then, mostly to roam the streets and imagine the pathological pathways he would utilize if he were an enemy shinobi invading this village. It was a useful exercise, though he would much prefer having the infrastructure of an enemy nation available as a map in his mind. He had no intention of ever attacking Takigakure unless it was completely necessary.

For all the hatred he had for his clan, he had never wished anything ill on Takigakure. He was neutral on it. It was the place his parents had lived. The place he had been stolen from. The place he was eventually brought back to. And the place he had left again.

He had never felt a part of it, but he had also never blamed it for that, necessarily. He was a strange and unlikable child with a distaste for being told what to do. The way he’d grown up had troubled him all his life, and he thought that the people there could see that, and feared him for it.

To an extent, he’d liked that. But he liked the blind faith of the civilians more. People liked and trusted the good doctor. He’d loved that. The perception that he was someone good. Someone who could do good. It was too bad it wasn’t true.

The few weeks passed without incident and finally there was enough of a colony in his lungs to make an attempt.

--- [words: 254] ---

[Mikatakujira Ruto]

[11/11] Back at his room at the inn, Ruto coated surfaces in plastic, packing it around the windows and the doors, creating a sterile environment as well as a totally encased one. Even though he’d only be breathing out the inert bacteria because he had applied no intent to it, he still didn’t want to risk anything. A good scientist was always cautious when it came to these kinds of things.

He packed up all his other experiments, finally organizing and categorizing them away. They were all interesting and would have their place back in the labs of Takigakure, but their day had ended here. When Ryu came he would deliver the extensive notes he had taken on those to him and allow him to bring them back to the lab.

What mattered here and now for demonstration was his ability to manipulate the bacteria.

Ruto breathed out the watery slurry of the colony he’d created within his lungs. It was a putrid shade of yellow, unfortunately very visible. Still, he could manipulate it like he could suiton, albeit with a little more difficulty. It would take more practice for him to be able to utilize this well, but this was a direct transmission vector he could utilize.

It was time to call his lord and show him the spoils of his work.

--- [words: 222] ---