"How about only seemingly menial tasks that actually need your personal touch?"
The man's single eye studied me carefully. "For example?"
"For example, an experiment that might prove that I wasn't, in fact, poisoned. Possibly.
"
Kakashi's lone eye was studying me very intensely now. "Yes.
Yes, I think I and the Hokage might be very interested in such a thing. "
"Great. Well, I'll need to keep my distance for this one.
Go ahead and turn on those knobs there, will you? The one over there, and that one. " My hand began to tingle.
The cells whose plasma sheathes had been eaten for chakra were gaining new ones as the ones left multiplied once again. Regretfully, I could feel the effect of my chakra system as it began to gorge on them too, for lack of a better word.
The replenishment vastly outpaced the drain though, for now at least. "Okay.
Now. Pull that switch.
"
Hatake Kakashi tolerantly pulled the switch. The Tesla coils came to life.
Kakashi watched them with some surprise, perhaps they reminded him of the chidori? Then he switched them off when I said. Moved on to the other at my direction.
The electrodes came active next. Step by step, my experiment was recreated until new plasma life began to take shape in the miniature superstorm.
Only this time I didn't approach.
Instead… "Right. Now, please approach the glass as close as you can without touching it.
"
"Well, if you say so. "
The man did so.
Nothing new happened. Actually, a lot less than before happened.
There was no wonder child, no grandiose surge in autonomy, no anomalous behaviour emerging from the primordial soup, no prodigal son. Just… plasma cells.
Small ones. Like floating blue sparks.
Nothing special about them. Well, beyond the fact that they existed and therefore challenged all assumptions about the true nature of life and its origin in the universe.
"Alright," I said, mentally bracing myself. "Now touch he glass.
"
Kakashi glanced wryly at me and touched the glass.
Nothing happened. The plasma cells just… whirled through the medium like before, riding the electrical currents and argon winds.
That was it.
"Are you concealing your presence? Or whatever it is you ninja do…"
"Somewhat, my sort tend to do it subconsciously. Should I not?"
Your sort being Anbu? "If you would?"
Kakashi relaxed his hold on himself, but still nothing happened. Except, maybe, those handful of plasma cells that were near his hand might have lingered there in spite of the argon currents, it was hard to tell from this distance.
Okay. "Now flare your chakra.
"
Kakashi flared his chakra.
The plasma cells cowered.
I knew I shouldn't project sentience on unicellular life, but it was the first word that came to mind. The moment Kakashi flared his chakra, the plasma cells closest to his hand combusted and the rest shot away like.
. .
I remembered one of those magic tricks that aired on TV after cartoon shows about magic. Someone would take a bowl of water and sprinkle pepper powder on it.
Then they would rub their fingertip on a bar of soap under the table. When they stuck their finger in the water, the pepper would pull away as if running away all the way to the edges.
The plasma cells reacted exactly like that.
Even as simple as they were, they reacted with something practically indistinguishable from fight or flight instinct. I winced in sympathy, but this was an important data point.
"Right. You can stop now.
"
Kakashi withdrew his chakra and pulled his hand away. The gaze in his eye seemed more thoughtful now.
"For the next part we'll need-" an animal test subject with enough genetic overlap with humans. "A toad.
"
Kakashi's eye was flat. "A toad.
"
What, would you rather deal with a rat? Actually, best not to give him ideas. This man found delight in seeing pre-teens suffer Tora.
"Yeah. Think you can find one? There should be some on the property.
" I wasn't even being facetious, I'd had a lot of time to think about this over the past few days. "I can't go flailing after them, I gotta take it easy for the next couple of weeks, doctor's orders you know.
"
Kakashi blinked lazily at me, then made a hand sign and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
I reluctantly took my hand off the van de Graaff generator that was the only thing staving off the death of my subtle body and, very slowly, approached the medium. I wondered if Kakashi had a shadow clone hidden somewhere, watching me even now.
Nothing happened until I got within a meter and a half, then the plasma cells began to behave like proper Anami.
I backed off.
The plasma cells… didn't regress, exactly, but their behaviour didn't progress in complexity either.
I was more literal about projecting sentience than I knew. Yemo's development, it turned out, had not been completely spontaneous.
I went through several theories, but the only explanation was that it had borrowed the cognitive processing capability from something else. Or, rather someone.
Me. The aura body is real.
I then thought of the complete lack of reaction to Kakashi, until chakra got involved. The aura body is real, except in ninja.
But Kakashi wasn't my only data point here either. I was even farther away when things started last time, but I still got Yemo.
For a moment, I was very conscious of the nerve in my arm. For nothing to happen even when Kakashi was right there with his hand on the glass…
The idea that I was some kind of super special snowflake was considered and immediately discarded.
Did that mean Kakashi was the anomaly? Or maybe ninja in general had no aura at all? Well, for a given value of absence. Hiruzen and Orochimaru had a literal aura duel, or whatever it was called when you flared your chakra that way.
And the Rinnegan could apparently pull out people's 'souls', which were shaped like their bodies. For a little while there anyway.
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