Chapter 38

Things were going well, my birthday passed and I spent time with Gai and his new team.

The only major event being Iwa's invasion of Rain Country.

Which escalated tensions.

I guess Iwa wasn't happy fighting us and Kusa and elected to piss-off Hanzo as well.

Other then that nothing much happened, Team Irregular had only been on four more missions together and things went unexpectedly well.

No major upsets.

I and/or my clones spent a lot of time with Orochimaru being his henchman and practicing DNA Isolation on my rabbit farm.

Progress was slow but it was much better than paving my own path.

That would have been almost hopeless.

...

I stood and watched Team Chōza complete another lap around the training field.

Gai, Genma, and Ebisu.

Or Gai plus two nobodies.

Gai's teammates didn't go the extra mile, often giving up when they got tired and not continuing when I healed them.

It was upsetting and a waste of time training them, but it made Gai happy so I endured.

I could vaguely remember Ebisu so I knew that he wasn't total cannon fodder.

But Genma I didn't have any hope for.

He was the first to quit and spent too much time training his throwing skills.

A total waste.

But at least he gave me some of his blood, so I didn't mind him too much.

"Alright I'll heal you once more but then I've got to go."

Gai fist pumped and started running faster, while his two teammates groaned.

Healing Duy and Gai was a drain on my time, but it was worth it both were showing great improvement.

Though that could be because Gai was going through puberty...

Sigh...

"Genma stop dragging your feet!"

Genma ignored me and continued being a useless waste.

I made a single hand-sign and an arrow of lightning appeared over my shoulder.

"Run faster!"

Genma didn't head my warning...

With a thought, the lightning arrow sped off in his direction.

"Faster!"

The arrow narrowly missed his ass and Genma started running.

"Are you trying to kill me!?"

I readied another arrow and ignored him.

"Move it!"

Genma matched his pace with Ebisu.

"You too Ebisu!"

I launched the lightning arrow.

It zipped between Genma and Ebisu.

I looked at Gai for a moment to see if he needed some 'motivation'.

He didn't...

But Genma had slowed when I stopped looking at him.

"I said faster!"

I readied another arrow

...

I was watching as Orochimaru gathered samples from the Kaguya's body.

After a little thought I handed it over to him, I had already learned everything I could from it, so it didn't matter if I handed it over for some brownie points.

Orochimaru certainly apricated it and I got to learn some new things.

A win in my books.

"Anything interesting?"

Orochimaru shook his head.

"If he was alive I might have found something, but because he's dead, I won't know until I look at the DNA."

Alrighty...

"I'll bring the next one in alive."

Orochimaru inclined his head but didn't look away from what he was doing.

"What did you hope to achieve from collecting this specimen?"

Honesty seemed to be my best bet, if I lied, he would probably know.

"I want to awaken the Kaguya's bloodline in myself."

Orochimaru shook his head at me.

"And how would a corpse help you with that."

I don't think that was a question.

"Understood Sensei."

Orochimaru side-eyed me for a moment before looking away seemingly satisfied.

"You also destroyed the chakra network."

I nodded.

"I was practicing with chakra network expansion."

Orochimaru nodded.

"I can see that he exploded from the inside out. "

I blew a breath from my nose.

"Going from low-Jonin level reserves to Kage-level was too much for him."

Orochimaru hummed but didn't speak.

He finished what he was doing and removed his gloves.

"Any problems with it other than that?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Other than losing a good bit of chakra control it seems fine as long as you have a good healing factor."

Orochimaru started labeling his newly acquired organ jars.

"We'll test it out and see what can be improved."

Might as well go for the home-run.

"Can we try to improve my Nerve Enhancement as well?"

Orochimaru shook his head.

"I've already done something similar myself, I'll give you my notes for you to pursue in your own time."

Awesome, hopefully, he made more progress then I did.

"Thank you, Sensei."

Orochimaru said nothing but nodded and sealed all his now labeled jars away.

...

"Shiro?"

I turned and looked at mom.

"Yes?"

I looked and saw that she had Emergency Rations by the scruff of his neck.

"Why is this running around the house?"

An excellent question.

"Let's go find out."

I walked past her, taking Emergency Rations as I passed.

I made my way to the lab and saw that the door was open, which wasn't too unusual.

I walked inside and saw that Emergency Rations had chewed through the metal bars of his cage.

"It seems we have another escapee in the house."

Emergency Ration's wife was on the lose as well...

"Clean up your mess."

Mom walked away leaving me alone to search for my missing rabbit.

"Perhaps this is a sign that you were meant to be free."

I looked at Emergency Rations.

And his little rabbit eyes met mine.

"But not today."

I put him in one of the glass aquariums with a few other female rabbits.

Maybe more wives would keep him occupied.

...

"Iwa has declared war on Konoha."

Weren't they fighting Rain?

"Why are they in such a rush to die?"

Mom sent me a reproachful look.

"Don't joke around, this is serious."

As was I.

"Are we getting deployed?"

Mom shook her head.

"Not yet, we won't be deployed until later unless we choose to go."

Should I stay or should I go...

"Let's see what happens, I might follow Orochimaru if he goes out."

I imagine he would be eager to capture some bloodline users.

"Alright thanks for the update, I've got things to prepare."

It seems we wouldn't be getting a new house yet...

Sigh...

...

"So, Sensei."

Orochimaru just stared at me, he wanted me to stop beating around the bush.

"War has officially been declared, what are your plans?"

Orochimaru continued his staring but spoke.

"I'm heading to the front to gain merits."

I snorted, merits likely meant experimental subjects.

"Can I join you?"

Orochimaru narrowed his eyes at me.

"We'll see."

Alrighty...

"So, what's the plan for today Sensei?"

Orochimaru turned and made his way to a carboard where he withdrew a stack of loose paper.

"You will be making Indexing and Analysis Seals and I will analyze the Kaguya DNA you brought me."

Alrighty...

"Sure thing."

I grabbed the paper and ignored the offered brush, I unsealed my own from my Kunai pouch and took a seat.

...

"Come take a look."

I was startled and messed up the seal I was working on.

I looked over to see Orochimaru waving me over to a large script covered scroll.

I walked over and placed my hand on the center-left of the seal.

The seal activated and I was put under a light Genjutsu allowing me to see the DNA the scroll had analyzed.

"What am I looking at?"

I knew it had something to do with the bones but it wasn't drastically different from normal DNA.

"Part of the Shikotsumyaku."

What?

"How did you identify it so quickly?"

Orochimaru placed his hand beside mine and gestured towards a few of the 'rungs' of the DNA.

"These nucleotides here are for bone growth, and this is completely foreign to normal humans."

Orochimaru pointed Vaguely towards another part of the DNA.

Ninety-nine percent of human DNA was the same, with a few differences often corresponding to physical traits.

I guess that made it easy to single out a bloodline.

"It's also a recessive gene with its dominate counterpart being here."

The Genjutsu shifted and we were looking at a different section of DNA.

"It has something to do with Yang chakra and physical energy."

I blew a breath out of my nose.

"Anything else?"

Orochimaru nodded.

"There is a part here that determines the body's natural regeneration, that's foreign as well."

He gestured towards a few different parts of the DNA.

"This, this, and this all have something to do with personality traits, but I won't be able to tell what it is without testing."

He ended his sentence as he removed his hand from the seal.

"Would I be able to isolate these?"

Orochimaru nodded but raised an eyebrow.

"Yes? But your better off using DNA Overwrite..."

That was fine, better than fine.

"...It will be your project, so you won't receive any help from me."

Isolating was so much easier than splicing, it wasn't too much of a stretch to say that I could do so on my own.

I removed my hand from the seal and rubbed my eyes.

"That's fine it's a good opportunity to put what I learned to the test."

Not that I was anywhere near ready...

"Thanks, Sensei."

Orochimaru nodded.

I thought for a moment, sat down, and started removing my sandal.

I took it off revealing a seal on my ankle.

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow at me.

I pressed my finger against it and withdrew a vial and a notebook with a puff of smoke.

"Here Sensei."

He took it and eyed the vial of blood for a moment before he set it aside and started flipping through the notebook.

"I got that in Grass Country, I caught a spy that had an interesting Bloodline."

Orochimaru snorted.

"Bloodlines don't literally come from the blood."

I snorted as well.

"I wrote that when I was much younger."

It just said 'inject blood?'.

It was just a random thought...

"The bloodline grants a good healing ability different from what I've seen before, I had planned to combine it with the Uzumaki bloodline to become immortal."

Orochimaru furrowed his brows.

"The two bloodlines combined will make you close to immortal, the only limitation being aging or chakra exhaustion."

I believed that the healing factor plus my own would make me unkillable, but I'd changed my thought's on it after a bit of study.

The bloodline healed you but sometimes improperly, long-term use of the bloodline would cause a build-up of mistakes that unless corrected would eventually impede your bodily functions.

My bloodline had a similar fault if my stem cells were used up and divided too quickly they aged and became prone to cancer and other malformities.

Thankfully I was on top of things and eliminated any cells that were too old.

Stem cell bone weapons weren't an option anymore though...

But I guess it was a worthwhile endeavor if I learned my healing's weakness.

"Alright Sensei I've got to go, enjoy your research." I sent Orochimaru a backward wave as I left.

I've laid a trap, if Orochimaru jumped the gun and spliced the bloodline into himself it'd weaken him.

If he took his time and studied it and found the flaws in the bloodline, I'd claim innocence.

Win-win.

...

Emergency Ration's new wives had done as intended and kept him busy, but now I had a surplus of rabbits.

Though I guess I've got a lot of test subjects now...

I went to a different cage and grabbed two normal male rabbits.

A quick tap to the neck and one was dead and a tap to the forehead and the other was unconscious.

Now it was time to make some cancer.

...

"How was the mission?"

Judging from Gai's still enthusiastic, but less enthusiastic then normal look it wasn't good.

"We babysat for a couple so they could have a date-night!"

I snorted but wiped the smile off my face at the look Gai gave me.

"What was so bad about it?"

Gai went on to explain that Genma had left the stove on and almost burnt down the house when they left to visit the park.

I fought to keep the smile off my face.

I wish I had a few of these stories...

...

I found it!

The reason for cancers supposed immortality, it was a weird enzyme that 'copied' the telomere and added bits of DNA to its tips making it longer.

It seemed present but dormant in all the cells but was most prevalent in sperm cells and some immune cells.

It was activated when cells mutated and somehow activated the enzyme.

Sadly, the mutation caused cancer as the cell never died and duplicated indefinitely.

So, I didn't want the mutation but I still needed a way to temporarily activate the enzyme.

It was active in the sperm cells constantly adding to the telomere length maintaining it and keeping it young.

I guess it was so the egg isn't fertilized by some old mangled DNA.

I imagine the egg had something similar going on...

I sighed and put it out of my head.

I needed a way to activate the enzyme, I'd observe the process more and see if there was a way to do so with seals.

It was likely that I would need to step up my Fuinjutsu practice.

A lot of the hard work was done by someone else, I just needed to change DNA Overwrite's Seals and I would be good to go on cell immortality...

Though if I was doing that I might as well change the seals and make DNA Isolate work with them.

Overwrite was much different then Isolate...

Overwriting my DNA just to change one passive trait seemed like overkill.

Even if

There was a lot of potential for mistakes.

I wasn't willing to risk any mistakes...

Perhaps I'll start with isolate while I think about activating the as of yet unnamed enzyme.

...

Looking at DNA Overwrite's seal-work was headache-inducing.

I got the gist of what was happening but I had no clue how to change it without having it fall apart on me.

All I needed to do was suppress the dominant non-active Shikotsumyaku DNA.

But how do I get the seal to do that...

The DNA dismantling part can go...

As can the part where it puts it all together...

The copy part that copies the intended change and applies the work can stay...

As can the other two-hundred parts...

The part that makes the change temporary can go...

Now the seal is unbalanced...

Further unbalancing won't matter if its already fucked...

Now I needed to add the part that suppresses the dominant gene from DNA isolating.

I looked down at the seal.

It was a mess...

Goddammit...

Maybe Overwrite is the way to go...

I just need to make the two genes both recessive...

Which involved a little DNA Splicing...

Get rid of the dominant Gene and then splice in a second recessive gene...

Sigh...

What a headache...

I also didn't need to Overwrite my own body...

I could just Overwrite someone else's DNA and absorb them...

Most of my hesitance about DNA Overwrite was because I didn't want to use it on myself...

Alright!

That's the plan!

Overwrite someone and then absorb them.

I was pretty much done with Stem Cell Vampire anyways...

Now I just needed to splice that DNA together...

Hopefully, the Infertility was only because some idiot was splicing animal DNA.

But I guess I'd see...

It was an acceptable sacrifice even if that wasn't the case...

...

Orochimaru had helped me get a hold on the seals so all I needed to do was splice the two genes together though sadly I wasn't capable of that yet...

Though I would be soon.

Hopefully...

Now the question was, do I use another one of my recessive genes or do I use the pure Kaguya's recessive gene?

I'd say I should use my own but I had no idea what the right way to go was...

I'll use mine and if it goes badly, I'll use the Kaguya's gene.

Sigh...

I also needed to identify and index my own DNA.

Lots of stuff to be done...

...