Tests and Results

At that particular moment, Kozai was waiting outside what appeared to be the medical bay. He had been invited here the day before, and was hoping to see what kind of resources Youka had acquired in the time since they had last met. The sheer fact that there was a medical bay before them meant that there was equipment inside that he could use, potentially to explore combinations of bloodlines. And of course, he was there to assist and discuss things with Youka.

Youka had awoken from what was more than likely only two to three hours of sleep after previous performing a surgery on himself and his friend. it had taken a long time and also had reaped some benefits. Today would be the day so many things would turn out for them and plans would be set in motion. First on the list was to however show Kozai what he had been working on, or at least show him and then tell him as much as he needed to know. He would use this time to see what Kozai was working on and also what he was in the process of doing, once he went to see Echo.

Making his way to the lab he spotted Kozai standing outside the door. Youka took his time walking and yawned slightly as he crossed in front of Kozai and unlocked the door that led inwards. Holding the door he would let Kozai walk in first, more than likely the first thing he would see was an eye less head with varying needles protruding from its head in different places and next to it would be the skull of Naka that Maku had burned clean.

As Kozai walked in, he admired the view. What a marvelous facility! So much more resources than he had had in Iwa, that was for sure. Seeing the two heads, he noted that one of them lacked eyes. How interesting... Well then, he wasn't here to goggle at the lab. Down to business it was.

"So, what's on the agenda for today?" He would begin, straightening out his lab coat and pulling on some latex gloves. The skull seemed to be very well cleaned. Either Youka spent a lot of time on it, or the flesh had been removed by some sort of non-physical method, i.e. without a scalpel. That made Kozai curious as to exactly what they had at their disposal.

Youka walked in and let the door slam shut behind him as he followed Kozai into the room. It was just as he left it the night before head and all, nothing had been touched, so he was sure no one had come in before and attempted to find anything. For a moment Youka could see a hint of childish glee in Kozai's face which more than likely meant he was fascinated not only by the sheer amount of equipment Youka had at his finger tips but also probably had some questions about the skulls sitting on the table.

"Well i would like to get your view points on brain preservation after death and the ability to stop the degradation all together or slow it drastically after blood flow is lost. As you can see with the first head that now has no skin or eyes or hell anything. I took the brain out of this skull and plucked it's eyes for further studies. During my first for ray into the brain, I was messy and couldn't salvage it, thus why this skull doesn't have it anymore. However with this head that still has all of it's features minus the eyes, i'm trying to apply acupuncture to the brain in various areas to keep it alive. What do you think?"

It wasn't the truth per se but it was still in the ball park of what he was doing, maybe Kozai could shed some light on something without actually knowing the details of what was going on and where these heads had come from.

Well, directly into the mess then. Kozai took a closer look at the needles. Sheer acupuncture for preservation? Hmm... it depended on how he had rigged things up. Generally, Kozai didn't care much for the brain, as it was the normal somatic cells that gave him the best results, but Youka was doing something interesting here...

"Well then, I haven't tried this before, but in terms of cell preservations, Ringer's solution has worked best for me. It prolongs the cell's survivability after death of the human itself. It works well for the muscles and heart, though, and your method might be more effective. What have you observed so far? I don't think we should make any conclusions concerning methodology if we haven't observed the data yet."

Kozai was here mainly for the knowledge... but he was still curious as to exactly what Youka planned to achieve with the research.

"Well since this brain is already dead, this is more in infancy trial stage than anything. I could subject the brain to electro shock and see how it responds while under the accupunture. The method your speaking of sounds a tad bit more ethical than mine. You're actually working to preserve the cells. My technique more so stops them in their place. The tricky thing I've found though is if I puncture too far inwards I end up hitting the memory area of the brain past the prefrontal lobe, which does cause slight memory loss if tampered with to an extent."

Looking over at Kozai, he wondered exactly it was he was studying as well. He was a doctor of sorts just like Youka, and more than likely had been doing this for a much longer time than he himself had.

"What are you working on anyway, if you don't mind me asking. maybe I can shed some light or material for you if I have anything. I haven't started collecting samples of anything yet so I don't know how much help I will be."

"Oh, ethics, dear lord no. I merely use what poor resources are provided to me. I actually prefer to keep the cells alive... just in case. You never know what might happen, I might discover something that might require the cells to be alive. Resusitation of the cells is somewhat theoretical, and would be expensive anyway, so I prefer just to keep them as they are."

Now, the memory center... Kozai had been thinking about that lately, and had some interesting things to try out in the near future. However, now was not the time. When Youka asked his question, he would look at the ceiling, then at the man.

"Hmmm.... well, I've been sort of.... randomly collecting DNA samples, sort of as a hobby, you know? I encountered something interesting a while ago, a kind of chakra release that creates plant life. Imagine the applications... Well, I think in this case, Maku's villagers would be a prime sample pool to collect from, but let's not tell him, huh?" 

Kozai would finish this with a slight grin, and produce The Seed from the lab coat. "This is a DNA library; it carries all the strains of genetic material I've collected thus far. It's hardly useful yet, though, I haven't had enough tissue to collect." He would also produce the bad of Near's hair. "This is the hair of our old village leader before Echo, Near River. Quite the arrogant man, if you must know; I believe Echo ripped off his head or some such thing. Regardless, my first actual task as a medical ninja was to dissect the head, and I kept the hair in case of an occasion such as this."

He touched the Seed to the hair inside, then put the bag away. "The Seed now contains River DNA, which facilitates the advanced element Thunder Release."

"Ah yes, Ok I see that does make a lot of sense, live cells are always better than dead ones when you are looking for information. While I have you here, what exactly are you doing for Echo, if you don't mind me asking, I was actually on my way to see him but I got caught up in my work here."

Youka threw it in quickly and sort of off handed like he could care less about the information. He didn't want to come off as prying into too much but at the same time, he would take what he could get.

"So you are collecting DNA as well...Hmmm, I've found that just the dna doesn't work, you usually need a bigger portion of the subjects body as well. Have you found a way to ignore that fact, I would be very excited to hear about it."

When Kozai mentioned the Yuki villagers and using them without their knowing, Youka just pictured Naka and Yorice, whose heads now resided on the table in front of them. He had used them both and had it covered up for his and Maku's own gain. The object that Kozai held was an amazing thing and Youka was instantly drawn to it, it would make storage so much simpler but he stopped him self from coveting.

Hmm... Kozai was now a little wary. He couldn't help but shake the feeling that he had stumbled into a time of his life where he would be used and abused for something catastrophic. Well, he would just have to go with the flow; retreating now was far too late. 

"I haven't yet found a way to bypass the body part requirement, but apparently the doctors in Amegakure have. I managed to receive Hyuuga and Uchiha DNA while there without having to spice a whole limb. As for Echo, well, I'm just giving him a report. We in Iwa haven't heard from him in a while."

He placed the Seed back in his coat, and stood in front of the skulls. "When I fused Uchiha DNA with Senju DNA in the Seed... something happened before the two strains separated. I want to find out exactly what..."

Uchiha, That was something Youka had a lot of personal time with, very very intimate time. He hadn't heard about this Hyuuga yet, what was this. It seemed Amegakure would have to be another location for Youka to visit if they had found a way to bypass needing to transplant body parts.

"I would very much like to see if there was something like that possible. It would make transplants and fusions of things ten times more easy than what they are now. What are the Hyuuga, I haven't heard of this."

The Senju was another body he wanted to harvest and had tried while he was in Yuki to take the body of a ninja by the name of Lazuru, he had sadly never gotten the chance however.

"What happened when you fused them both, was one more dominant than the other?"