Matter of Circumstance

He was so warm. His skin was in a constant state of light burn — not in a painful manner, but in a soothing one like he were resting beside the fireplace of his childhood home.

He wished that he could smell the charring of the wood or the hear the cackling of the fire, but hardly does reality meet one's expectations. Rather, he smelt only the plastic of the respirator and tubing that was attached to his face, and he heard only the occasional bubbling of the liquid that surrounded him.

'At least I'm warm…' he thought in a state of delirium — of half-awareness.

Through the hazy glass, he could only discern a pair of red orbs — or were they pink? They stood out in the bleak underground room in which he seemed to be held. His hazy mind was unable to fully comprehend what they were, or what they belonged to.

The distorted glass before him made any sort of detail beyond his liquid confinement null, and his perpetual state of mental impairment made any serious attempt at understanding his situation improbable.

In between his bouts of semi-consciousnesses, he often touched at the glass in front of him, feeling its smoothness on the points of his fingers. Any other physical action was made impossible by the weak state his body was in. It was difficult to move — even just the most minuscule of movements. And not because it hurt or because he was constrained, but because he was just too physically drained.

This is what he had wanted, right? A little bit of rest?

'How long have I been resting?' Katsu had that fleeting thought. As soon as he had thought it, he was already asleep and unaware that it had even passed his mind.

~~~~~

It had been an unknown duration of time later, and a man in a white coat appeared just beyond a liquid chamber. He tapped on the glass a few times and smiled.

Behind the glass was a blue-haired boy who unconsciously floated in the middle of a cylindrical metal pod. Filling the pod and suspending his body was a green fluid that bubbled from time to time.

Connected on either sides of his pod were two identical pods, each holding a different individual. The three pods were connected by a series of pipes and tubing and were pushed up against the wall of a wide but low-hanging room.

The room had a polished tile floor of stone, walls of gray brick, and a dirt roof held up by rows of large wooden planks. Various pieces of medical equipment and other miscellaneous appliances littered the floor and or rested upon steel sheet tables spread throughout the room.

The pod to the left of the boy's contained a man with ear-length, black hair. He was of slender build, and his eyes were shut together, signifying that he too was unconscious — a property of the green liquid.

In the right chamber was a young, malformed women with long, brown hair. Some of her skin seemed to be missing, exposing the red muscle underneath, while the entirety of her right arm had been fused into her body. She too was unconscious, though it was hard to tell as she would occasionally twitch like she were a malfunctioning machine.

Each of the pods held a serial designation that was marked at the top with a small, white sticker. From left to right, they were marked as: S-2, R-16, Y-4.

The white-haired man plucked a brown, leather journal from a nearby desk and began to write inside of it while inspecting the boy in the middle pod.

"Experimental Test Run #77. Over the years, recipient R-16 has reacted well to ancillary S-2. Nature affinity is a match. Ancillary Y-4 still struggles to match with the recipient subject, but trials with R-16 will continue indefinitely, regardless of potential negative repercussions to either subjects."

The man seemed to stop his writing and glanced up at the boy. "Time is short. I am going all in. I do hope you provide worthwhile results, or these years will have been all for naught."

The man set aside the journal, pressed a finger onto a small, silver button that was located below the middle tank's glass, and injected a tiny bit of his chakra into it.

The two metallic walls that separated the middle pod from the two outside ones slid open, conjoining the three bodies of the green liquid and forming one large, singular tank in which all three subjects resided together.

"The main fusing process will begin… now," the man declared as he pressed another button on the middle pod.

The blue-haired boy jerked for a moment before beginning to twitch uncontrollably, though he remained unconscious.

The sides along his ribs, thighs, and arms began to melt away in a viscous navy blue. When the blue fluid touched the other two individuals, it began to coalesce around them and bring them closer to the boy.

At this point, the boy's body had began violently protesting in place. His legs slammed against the glass while his arms madly waved around in the green liquid.

The other two subjects provided little resistance in their gradual demise, merely floating towards the boy while remaining fast asleep.

The black-haired man's body began to merge with the boy's in disturbing fashion. His body was warped and broken down by the blue fluid before being devoured by the boy's body entirely. It was as though he'd been thrown into an acidic wood chipper, slowly melting away into unrecognizable chunks of mass before vanishing altogether.

The woman had fared better. The blue fluid failed to dissolve the entirety of her body, only taking bits and pieces instead. Once half of her body had been consumed by the boy's, the rest was rejected and released by the gluttonous blue fluid. Now only the left half of her body remained intact, left to silently float on the right side of the bonded chamber.

"Y-4 has failed to completely merge once again. A partial failure, and partial success — better than the last few attempts as it were. Her body has been left in an unusable state, and a Y-5 replacement will need to be acquired should I deem ice release worthy of being experimented upon in future tests," the man said while writing into his journal.

The man glanced back up at the middle chamber where a blue-haired boy calmly floated. He seemed more or less unaffected by the whole procedure, ignoring the occasional spasm.

"S-2 has proven a relative success. Determining factors are unknown at this time. What was different this time compared to the others? Subject R-16 has no identifiable properties that would prove him special or unique. Other factors are likely responsible. Follow-up tests are required, concluded with a thorough autopsy."

The man tucked the journal into his coat and studied the boy for a few more seconds. He then turned to leave, shutting off the lights of the lab as he did so.

"Just a few days now and Iwa intelligence will be crawling all over this place. It's a shame that I'll have to abandon it so soon, but in the pursuit of the chimera technique, drawbacks are to be expected."

As he pushed open the camouflaged metal hatch that concealed the laboratory under the earth, the man's gaze was drawn to the night sky.

"A full moon…"